Episodes
| Title | First Broadcast | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 20110608 | Disease resistant chickens may be the first genetically engineered farm animals to reach the supermarket. Scientists in Scotland and Cambridge have produced poultry that can stop bird flu from spreading and are working on complete resistance to infection. The same technology can be used for pigs, sheep and cattle for a range of diseases . Sue Broom reports on the current state of the science of genetically engineered farm livestock and the ethical concerns that surround them. Producer, Erika Wright. Sue Broom meets the scientists using GM technology to control animal disease. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20110615 | 30,000 are dead or missing following the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Like the Indian Ocean tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, the events of March 11 remind us of the destructive forces that can lurk in the deep ocean. But while waves of up to 40 metres height pummelled the Japanese coast line, as happened in Sumatra 2004, Japan was prepared, and had defences and emergency routines in place. How well did they work? This was the first ever test of such engineered defences and rehearsed evacuations. The death toll was much lower than in the Indian Ocean, but great sea walls crumbled under the assault of the powerful ocean waves, and whole towns were still washed away. Roland Pease reports from Japan on the lessons learnt from the recent tsunami. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20110622 | Large numbers of seismologists fear the recent earthquake in Japan reveals greats gaps in their science. Attention in the country has focused on the threat to Tokyo and to the south, where danger still lurks; but experts admit they underestimated the danger to the north, where the quake and tsunami struck in March. If even the Japanese experts, the best prepared in the world, can get it wrong, what other dangers is seismology missing? Roland Pease investigates from Japan. Producer Roland Pease Presenter Roland Pease. What's wrong with earthquake science? Roland Pease investigates. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20110629 | On 28th June 1911 an explosion erupted in the sky over the Nakhla region of Alexandria in Egypt. A chunk of rock, about the size of a football, had broken away from the surface of Mars several million years ago. It floated around the Solar System until eventually the Martian rock was pulled into our planet's gravitational field. When it fell to Earth a century ago, eyewitnesses saw an explosion high in the atmosphere, as the meteor split into dozens of fragments which hurtled towards them and were buried up to a meter deep in the ground. Dr Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, looks at the legacy of the Nakhla meteorite. These precious rocks are now being used by scientists to ground-truth data sent back from Spirit and Opportunity - the two rovers currently exploring the Martian surface. Over 100 yrs after it landed, the Nakhla meteorite could hold the key to the ancient history of Mars, answering questions about the presence of water and the possibility of microbial life on the Red Planet. Producer: Michelle Martin. How a meteorite that landed on Earth 100 years ago is helping astronomers explore Mars. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20111102 | For six months, CERN scientists guarded the best kept secret in science - that they'd seen tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos breaking the universal speed limit. The measurements were at the boundaries of scientific techniques - the discrepancy was just 10s of nanoseconds; parts of their apparatus barely ran at that speed. For six months they checked and then re- checked again every step of their analysis. And still the result held up.
When the results were finally released at the end of September, the headline writers had a field day. Nothing sells copy like proof that Einstein was wrong. But fellow researchers at CERN were less excited. The overwhelming belief was that there still remained some hidden error. And for those who ran the experiment, the dreadful concern that sooner or later that error could turn up, and their triumph might become the stuff of mockery. And the next day the investigations continued.
Roland Pease meets the scientists who have staked their reputations on the result, on the critics who think they can spot the mistake, and the theoreticians who think they can explain it all.
Producer: Roland Pease.
(Photo of presenter Roland Pease by OPERA detector by Matous Laznovsky)
Did CERN scientists really break the universal speed limit? Roland Pease investigates. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20111109 | The last untouched realm of life on the Earth is about to be opened up for scientific exploration. These are the subglacial lakes of Antarctica - vast, dark bodies of prehistoric water, which have been sealed under kilometres of ice for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Andrew Luck-Baker looks at the science and the ambitious plans behind their exploration.
Russian scientists are poised to penetrate the largest, Lake Vostok, with a conventional drill next January. They have been drilling their way towards the lake top for several years now, located at their research station where the lowest temperature ever measured on the planet was recorded, -90 degrees C.
But the British may beat them when it comes to profound discoveries about subglacial lakes. In December this year, a UK team will set up its own extraordinary ice 'drilling' operation, three kilometres above Lake Ellsworth on the other side of the frozen continent. Lake Ellsworth is roughly the size of Lake Windermere. The UK's audacious plan entails melting a narrow 3.5 kilometre long hole into that lake with a jet of near- boiling water. The scientists will deploy a probe into the depths of the hidden lake to take readings and samples from top to bottom. This stage of NASA-style mission is scheduled for December 2012. It involves scientists and engineers from the British Antarctic Survey and a number of British universities.
Between them, the projects could discover unique forms of microbial life which are adapted to a combination of extreme cold, crushing pressure and no light. The findings may reveal the limits at which life can exist and the tricks it has evolved to survive there both here on Earth and on other planets. The projects will also act, it is argued, as tests for technologies for seeking for extraterrestrial life on ice-encrusted water-moons such as the planet Jupiter's Europa.
The British programme will also drill into the muds and sands at the bottom of Lake Ellsworth and bring samples back to the surface. Those sediments promise to give us a much clearer picture of what climate conditions would bring about the collapse of Antarctica's great ice sheets and resulting catastrophic global sea level rise. The sediments should contain information about this because they themselves formed when Antarctica in that region was too warm to host a thick ice sheet.
The engineering effort behind the project is daunting. The project will set up a powerful boiler on the ice surface in a place where the air temperature is routinely at -20 degrees C. That initially involves transporting 60 tonnes of hardware and 55 tonnes of diesel fuel 300 kilometres through the icy Ellsworth Mountains. Part of the cargo is a length of hose 3500 metres long. Once it is all assembled and the team is ready to go, it will take them about 3 days to melt a 30 cm wide hole to the top of the lake.
Then they'll have just 24 hours to lower a probe (and another coring device for taking sediment samples) down the hole into the lake water and down about 100 metres to the lake bottom. The probe will sample the water as it descends and grab mud off the bottom in its search for extreme adapted microbes. It then has to be hauled back more than 3 kilometres up to our world before the shaft in the ice freezes up.
As for the Russian project, Lake Vostok is the size of Lake Ontario, 1000 metres deep and is under 4 km of ice. It's been isolated under ice for maybe 20 million years. The most interesting time-encapsuled life-forms are likely to be there. Last February the Russians had to stop 30 metres short of the lake top because of bad weather and drilling snags. Using a more standard drilling technique, the drilling gets trickier as you go deeper. Although the Russians may break through into Vostok's water this year, they won't retrieve any samples. According to their plan, they'll do that the following year and will only get a glimpse of life forms in the lake's upper reaches.
Exploring Antarctica's subglacial lakes for new lifeforms and future sea level rise clues. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20111116 | When leptin failed to be a wonder solution to obesity, this hormone produced by fat cells, disappeared from the headlines. Twenty years on scientists now believe leptin is critical to how the body works, regulating appetite, the immune response, inflammation and depression. Vivienne Parry investigates.
Producer: Erika Wright.
Vivienne Parry explores the crucial role the hormone leptin plays in the body. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20111123 | An increasing understanding of genetics has uncovered new targets for antiviral drug treatments. Although still in the very early stages scientists claim they may be able to develop drug treatments which can be used against a range of viruses. At present antiviral drugs are very specific, usually attacking just one virus. However the research which Kevin Fong examines in this edition of Frontiers suggests 'broad spectrum antivirals', drugs capable of curing all viral infections from the common cold to HIV may be with us in a few years time. If the claims are true such drugs could revolutionise medicine dealing a blow to viruses in much the same way as the invention of antibiotics did to bacterial infections over the last century.
Producer: Julian Siddle.
Antivirals. Kevin Fong looks at new techniques to cure all viral infections. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20111130 | Why don't we all get depressed? The short answer is that most of us do - and, paradoxically, there may be good reasons, rooted in our evolutionary past, for this. But depression comes in all degrees of severity, and only a minority of us get clinically depressed: a state which is not only more intense than ordinary everyday gloom and despondency, but less obviously adaptive. In Frontiers, Geoff Watts explores the origins of depression and efforts to find new treatments. The latest research is looking into the brains of those who never get depressed, those who seem to have a natural resilience. Could these hardy individuals hold the key to preventing depression taking hold in the first place?
The notion that milder forms of depression may be helpful emerged a little over a decade ago, prompted by the observation that this state of mind is so relatively common. The claim is part of a more general attempt to explain the kinds of illness we suffer from by reference to our evolutionary history. Natural selection is pretty good at adapting organisms to function effectively in their environments. If depression is a regular feature of our state of mind, so the argument goes, maybe it's serving some useful purpose. It could be a bit like pain: something we don't like, but which has a biological value.
The father of this theory is the American psychologist Randolph Nesse, who believes that mild depression deters you from wasting energy pursuing unattainable goals, and encourages you to disengage from them and turn instead to something else. At first hearing the idea sounds fanciful. But since Nesse put forward the hypothesis, at least one study seems to have confirmed its plausibility.
So much for mild depression; but what of the more severe forms that don't so much prompt sufferers to reconsider their goals as drive them to give up entirely? Why, ask researchers, if mild depression is an adaptation, can it become so destructive so easily? Can this destructive form of depression be understood and prevented?
One helpful clue towards a better means of doing so can be found in the biology of people who experience huge amounts of stress, yet show no signs at all of depression. They have what is known in the trade as "resilience", and a research group in Manchester is trying to understand what it is and why it works. Is it a specific brain process? A variation of brain chemistry, a set of genes or all three in combination with specific life experiences? If something specific in people with resilience can be uncovered and then targeted, might we be able to prevent other people who face major life stress from succumbing to this debilitating disease?
Producer: Rami Tzabar.
Geoff Watts explores the origins of depression and efforts to find new treatments. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20111207 | Gareth Mitchell ask how near we are to achieving hypersonic flight. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib | |
| 20120620 | Gene therapy - repairing malfunctioning cells by mending their DNA - offers an elegant solution to diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, caused by a single flawed gene. It's a very simple concept to describe - simply insert a 'normal' gene to do the job - but it's this process, the delivery of the gene, that's proving to be so difficult and time consuming. Since the first human study began in 1990 the field has struggled with various technical challenges and set-backs. But over a decade on, researchers are beginning to report successes in treating several devastating diseases. Geoff Watts finds out about some of the new techniques for gene therapy, and discovers how these are now being used in a trial of a new method of gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. 12 years ago, a group of scientists from Imperial College in London, Oxford and Edinburgh formed the Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium. This year they started the world's biggest trial of gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. Funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, the Medical Research Council and The National Institute for Health Research , the trial will treat 120 CF patients with either a placebo or a healthy copy of the gene that causes CF. The gene is wrapped up in a fat globule, or liposome and delivered in aerosol form directly to the lungs. Producer: Fiona Roberts. Geoff Watts explores new techniques in gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20120627 | Could creating blood in the laboratory make infections passed on through blood transfusions a thing of the past? Vivienne Parry investigates. The drive behind the quest for creating a blood substitute was originally from the US Military - during the Vietnam war a clean, reliable and portable alternative to donor blood would have helped to save many lives. Donated blood can only be kept for a limited time, needs refrigerating and has to be cross matched according to which ABO group people belong to. The universal donor - O negative blood - can be used on accident victims before a match is found. But it's in very short supply and often many units of blood are required. The history of creating blood has had a chequered past - with some products abandoned because of side effects and others proving too costly to produce. One analysis of clinical trials on blood substitutes in 2008 revealed a higher incidence of heart attacks in patients who'd been given them, compared with those who received human blood. Some scientists have tried using the pigment found in oxygen-carrying red blood cells - haemoglobin. This molecule is normally packed into the cells, so that it can grab oxygen breathed in by the lungs and release it in minute capillaries, providing the body with the oxygen needed to survive. But free haemoglobin is toxic to the body - presenting researchers with a technical challenge. Another approach has been to grow human red blood cells from cells extracted from umbilical cords - known as blood pharming. But with the average blood transfusion containing 2.5 million million red blood cells the scale of production would have to be enormous. A special cocktail of growth factors coax these stem cells into becoming red blood cells just like those the body produces naturally. Producer: Paula McGrath. Creating Blood: Vivienne Parry meets scientists hoping to create artificial blood. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20120704 | Gareth Mitchell meets the engineers who will transform the way we fly around the world. Gareth has a go at flying a personal aircraft in the flight simulator at Liverpool University. Drs Mike Jump and Mark White explain that the EU funded project MyCopter is seriously looking at the prospect of flying personal vehicles that are as easy to drive as a car. Sophie Robinson, a Ph.D student at Liverpool University, explains how her research into the safety and stability of auto-gyros, flying machines that already exist for personal travel, could set standards for the flying cars of the future. Gareth visits the Flight Gallery at the Science Museum in London with the curator, Dr Andrew Nahum, who shows him how the basic shape of aircraft has hardly changed in 70 years, since the days of the DC3. David Caughey, Emeritus Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cornell University, points out that the blended wing shaped aircraft is more energy efficient. So Gareth asks why we don't see them in service today - the answer is that apart from the innate caution of the airline manufacturers, the passengers would have no windows and it could be hard to evacuate such a craft speedily in an emergency. Gareth talks to Prof Jeff Jupp who worked on the wings of the largest passenger plane, the A380. He also talks about alternative fuels to kerosene and new designs for engines, that look old school as they have propellers, but will make the aircraft more energy efficient. But there may be a downside in that they could be noisier and slower than jet engines. Professor Paul Weaver at Bristol University tells Gareth about his work on making wings that change shapes like birds'. And Colin Sirett, Head of Research and Technology at Airbus UK, discusses some ideas for planes of the future, such as see through fuselages and pods that take passengers from the airport and attach to the aircraft. Editor: Deborah Cohen. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20121205 | A decade ago, the Human Genome Project revealed that only 1% of our DNA codes for the proteins that make our bodies. The rest of the genome, it was said, was junk, in other words with no function. But in September another massive international project, called ENCODE, announced that the junk DNA is useful after all. Adam Rutherford reports on the significance of this major discovery. He visits the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute outside Cambridge where the vast amount of data about our genome is produced and analysed. And he finds out how this new information is beginning to give insights into the origin and treatment of diseases, such as cancer. Adam also discovers that the study of genomes has changed dramatically since he finished his PhD: it's now all done in machines and not at the lab bench. Adam Rutherford reports on the recent discovery that much of our DNA is not useless junk. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| 20130619 | England's chief medical officer recently warned that within twenty years, 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.
A radically different approach to dealing with bacteria would be stop them from communicating and coordinating their 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.
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.
They monitor the number of their fellow bugs by sensing the concentration of a message molecule which they all manufacture and secrete into the environment. It's a rudimentary form of communication which many bacteria use to synchronise their activities.
In Frontiers, Geoff Watts talks to scientist and doctors who are exploring this phenomenon in disease-causing bacteria, and trying to devise ways of interfering with the 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. At least, that is the theory.
Can we beat bacteria by stopping the bugs from talking to each other? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl | |
| Acts of Creation | 20100721 | The creation of an artificial cell by scientist and entrepreneur Craig Venter shows what synthetic biology is capable of. But others want to go much further - recreating life from scratch, or redesigning it at the most fundamental level. In his Harvard Lab, Nobel laureate Jack Szostak is forcing strands of DNA's cousin RNA to compete with each other in a Darwinian struggle for existence. At Manchester University, John Sutherland is seeing whether the raw materials of biochemistry can form themselves in the kinds of puddles that might have existed on Earth 4 billion years ago. Some experts think it's only a matter of years before living synthetic cells will be grown out of inanimate starting materials - a simulation of the origins of life on the young Earth. Science writer Adam Rutherford asks what it will mean to us when it happens.
Producer: Roland Pease.
What will it mean to us once scientists are eventually able to recreate life from scratch? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| After the Volcano | 20101110 | In April this year, air traffic across most of North West Europe was grounded by a cloud of abrasive ash from the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. This was the first time in the era of jet flight that such an eruption has coincided with wind patterns to take ash into such busy airspace. But volcanologists say it will not be the last.
Tracey Logan investigates what is being done by geologists and meteorologists, engineers and aviation experts to ensure that they are better prepared for the next eruption. Producer Martin Redfern travels to Iceland with a team of geophysicists as they measure the rise of magma under the crater of Askja, one of the biggest volcanoes in central Iceland and finds out what they can do to predict the timing and severity of the next 'big one'.
Producer: Martin Redfern.
Tracey Logan asks if scientists are ready for the next Icelandic volcanic eruption. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Ageing | 20070509 | Peter Evans explores the study of ageing and longevity, one of the most exciting areas of current scientific research. He finds out how a better understanding of the ageing process has opened up a new field of medicine. Future possibilities include the prevention of heart disease, Alzheimer's and cancer, thus extending the human lifespan by several years.
Peter Evans on how the study of the ageing process has opened up a new field of medicine. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Ageing And Telomeres | 20110706 | Is there a test for how long you will live? If you believe what you read in some newspapers recently, perhaps the answer is yes. Recent media coverage of an intriguing area of ageing research suggested that measuring the ends of your chromosomes can tell you when you will die. Andrew Luck-Baker looks at the science behind the headlines by talking to leading scientists at an international meeting organised recently by the Swedish Society of Medicine. Chromosomes are topped and tailed by special protective structures known as telomeres. During the course of our lives they become shorter. When they erode to a critical length, cells die or shut down. The shortening of telomeres is considered by many scientists to be a key mechanism of ageing, and means of measuring the rate at which the body is ageing. Different people lose the telomere length at different rates. In population studies, short telomere length has been linked to reduced longevity and increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, depression, dementia and cancers. Environmental and behavioural factors such as smoking, not exercising, obesity, chronic stress and lower social class also linked the erosion of the chromosome caps. The biotech company, Life Length, set up by Spanish scientists, was the first to offer telome length tests to members of the public at the end of last year. In a few months, another based in the USA plans to do the same. The company in California, Telome Health, was co-founded by Professor Elizabeth Blackburn who shared the Nobel prize for Medicine in 2009 for her early research on telomeres. Neither firm claims to predict when you will die but they do believe their tests offer valuable medical information and could help in the prevention and treatment of diseases of old age. So why are many other researchers dubious about the value of telomere measurements for individual patients? Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker. Is there a test for how long you will live? Controversies in cutting edge ageing research. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Ageing and the brain | 20140611 | Geoff Watts investigates the latest thinking about our brain power in old age.
He meets researchers who argue that society has overly negative views of the mental abilities of the elderly - a dismal and fatalistic outlook which is not backed up by recent discoveries and theories.
Geoff talks to Professor Lorraine Tyler who leads a large study in Cambridge (CamCAN) which is comparing cognition and brain structure and function in 700 people aged between 18 and 88 years old.
He also meets scientists and participants involved in an unique study of cognition and ageing at the University of Edinburgh. It has traced hundreds of people who were given a nationwide intelligence test as children in 1932 and 1947. Since the year 2000, the study has been retesting their intelligence and mental agility in their 70s to 90s. The Lothian Birth Cohort study is revealing what we all might do in life to keep our minds fast and sharp well into old age.
One new and controversial idea holds that cognitive decline is in fact a myth. A team in Germany, led by Michael Ramscar, argues that older people perform less well in intelligence and memory tests because they know so much more than younger subjects and not because their brains are deteriorating. Simply put, their larger stores of accumulated knowledge slow their performance. Their brains take longer to retrieve the answers from their richer memory stores.
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.
Do our mental powers really decline in old age? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Alcohol | 20090608 | Sue Nelson goes behind the headlines to find out how alcohol affects our health. The impact of drink on our health is rarely out of the news, but information can be confusing. Latest studies link even moderate drinking to an increased risk of cancer, while others claim alcohol reduces heart disease.
Sue talks to experts in the field and learns that despite links to cancer being known for 100 years, understanding the actual mechanisms in the body remains under-researched and under-funded.
Sue Nelson goes behind the headlines to find out how alcohol affects our health. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Algae | 20081124 | Richard Hollingham investigates the scientific and environmental uses of algae.
Marine scientists are investigating ways of capitalising on its ability to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide and exploring the potential for creating algae-derived fuels as an eventual alternative to fossil fuels. He hears from scientists who argue for the mass production of algae, believing that it could eventually replace petroleum-based fuels, polymers and plastics.
Richard Hollingham investigates the scientific and environmental uses of algae. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Amphibian Collapse? | 20080609 | One third of amphibians globally are threatened with extinction. Sue Broom investigates. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Anaesthesia | 20140625 | General anaesthetics which act to cause reversible loss of consciousness have been used clinically for over 150 years. Yet scientists are only now really understanding how these drugs act on the brain and the body to stop us feeling pain. Linda Geddes reports on the latest research using molecular techniques and brain scanners.
Linda visits the Anaesthesia Heritage Centre where William Harrop-Griffiths, President of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, tells her about the discovery of agents that knock us out.
As an operation takes place in the Royal United Hospital in Bath, Professor Tim Cook explains the role of the anaesthetist.
Linda talks to Professor Nick Franks of Imperial College, London, about his research into how anaesthetics work at the level of the cell. Irene Tracey, Professor of Anaesthetic Science at Oxford University, discusses how her fMRI scans of people as they slowly undergo anaesthesia have revealed how the brain switches off. Professor Steven Laureys, Head of the Coma Science Group at Liege University in Belgium, explains how understanding anaesthesia can help coma patients and what it tells us about the difficult question of human consciousness.
Linda Geddes explores the latest research into how general anaesthetics work in the body. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Animal Personality | 20141210 | Professor Adam Hart explores the newest area in the science of animal behaviour - the study of personality variation within species as diverse as chimpanzees, wandering albatrosses, sharks and sea anemones. What can this fresh field of zoology tells us about the variety of personality among humans?
We are all familiar with the variety of temperament and character in the dog, Canis lupus familiaris, but this is the product of selective breeding by humans over generations.
A more surprising revelation is that up and down the animal kingdom, Nature favours a mix of personality types within a species. Oxford ornithologists working in nearby Wytham Woods have discovered that in a small bird species such as the Great tit, both bold and shy individuals prosper in different ways. The same applies to hermit crabs and sea anemones in the rock pools along the South Devon coast. In these creatures, scientists see a stripped down equivalent of the Extraversion-Introversion dimension of human personality. In sharks, researchers have discovered that there are sociable individuals and others who prefer their own company.
Human personality is generally tested with questionnaires. Animals have to be assessed by more indirect, arguably more objective methods. Techniques range from squirting rock pool creatures with syringes of water to pushing a blue spacehopper with a stick towards a nesting Wandering Albatross.
The commonest personality trait identified so far in non-human animals is Extraversion-Introversion. In primates, personality variation is more multidimensional. Psychologists have agreed on five fundamental dimensions of human personality - Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism and Conscientiousness. Among different monkey and ape species, primatologists have documented variation in 3 or more of these traits. In fact, in chimpanzees, they have discovered the Big Five plus an additional personality dimension which we humans lack, fortunately.
Adam Hart asks if how relevant the recent discoveries in animal personality research are to understanding the nature of personality in people, and whether this is an aspect of human nature which is still undergoing evolution.
Adam Hart is an evolutionary ecologist and Professor of science communication at the University of Gloucestershire.
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.
Image credit: Nicole Milligan
Prof Adam Hart explores a new field in zoology - animal personality. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Antarctica | 20080519 | Gabrielle Walker joins scientists to look at the effects of climate change. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Anthropocene | 20121121 | Humanity's impact on the Earth is so profound that we're creating a new geological time period. Geologists have named the age we're making the Anthropocene. The changes we're making to the atmosphere, oceans, landscape and living things will leap out of the rocks forming today to Earth scientists of the far future, as clearly as the giant meteorite that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs does to today's researchers. Science writer Gaia Vince looks at the impact of these planetary transformations from the perspective of geological time. When was the last time comparable events happened in Earth history, and are what are the key marks we're making on the planet that define the Anthropocene? Gaia explores the distinctive fossil record we will leave behind on the planet. Leading biologists and palaeontologists say this that will mark out the Anthropocene as a distinctive chapter in Earth history - on a par with the evidence of the mass extinction which took out the dinosaurs and launched a geological era 65 million years ago. This time, we are the asteroid, says Berkeley's Antony Barnosky. Extinction rates around the world are approaching those estimated for times in the deep past when most species became extinct. Far future fossil hunters may also discover a weirdly large number of large-sized fossil mammal species bones in the rocks of our times. Even more unnaturally, they come from just a tiny handful of species and they will be in the strata across every continent- a geological representation of billions of domestic livestock and the billions of people they fed. Some of our cities may also be preserved as 'artificial' layers of rock in the geological record. They will be like no other strata before in the history of the Earth. But what would a fossilised metropolis - with its concrete and glass buildings and underground train tunnels and sewers - look like in ten million years? Has humanity launched a new geological time period? Gaia Vince on the Anthropocene Epoch. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Artificial Meat | 20101124 | It doesn't look like the start of a revolution in meat production, but some small scraps of pig muscle tissue growing in a laboratory at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands could be just that. Professor Mark Post and his research team are the first to persuade cells taken from the muscle fibres of a live pig to carry on growing in dishes in the laboratory. And muscle is meat. With increasing pressure on food supply in the future and growing criticism of meat as an inefficient and environmentally costly way to make food, Geoff Watts looks at the science behind the idea of growing artificial meat.
He visits Maastricht to see the muscle tissue. It is on a very small scale at the moment, limited by cost and the current production technique, but Professor Mark Post is optimistic about scaling up their system, and believes it is just a matter of time and money. He does have more reservations about how long it will take to change the present short, thin strips into something with the texture and taste of real meat though.
Geoff Watts talks to meat expert Emeritus Professor Jeff Wood at the University of Bristol about the exact nature of texture and taste in meat, and observes how a consumer taste panel assesses meat. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult, and still impossible to say why meat tastes the way it does. Jeff Wood says it is every bit as complicated and subtle as tasting wine, and he is sceptical that an artificial product can ever be as good as the real thing. Mark Post refuses to be daunted by his task though, and believes the technology is at the same stage as computer technology several decades ago. He agrees it is an unromantic way to produce meat but thinks it might be a question of "needs must" in the future.
Would you eat artificial meat, grown in the lab? Geoff Watts investigates. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Artificial Photosynthesis | 20120613 | Chemist Andrea Sella explores the current race to do photosynthesis better than nature ever achieved. In just a few hundred years mankind has burnt fossil fuels which had taken natural photosynthesis billions of years to create. Now, around the world hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent on the race to develop a robust, cheap and efficient way to turn water and the light from the sun into new fuels we can use. At a time when politicians everywhere debate the economics and climatic burdens of future energy needs, such a Solar Fuel would be a genuinely novel alternative energy. Producer: Alex Mansfield. Andrea Sella on the race to find a cheap inorganic way to mimic nature's green stuff. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Bioprecipitation | 20090615 | Richard Hollingham investigates if bacteria in the atmosphere can influence the weather and meets some of the scientists who are working in what has been called 'bioprecipitation'.
He talks to David Sands from Montana University, who coined the term, and visits labs in Avignon and London where researchers are trying to understand more about the impact of bacterial particles on our weather. If the complexities of bioprecipitation can be unravelled, it might be possible to turn the process to our advantage and use these extraordinary bacteria to encourage rainfall in drought-affected regions of the world.
Richard Hollingham investigates if bacteria in the atmosphere can influence the weather. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Brain Machine Interfaces | 20121128 | Can reading the mind allow us to use thought control to move artificial limbs? Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, is one of the world's leading researchers into using the mind to control machines. One of his aims is to build a suit that a quadriplegic person can wear and control so that he or she can kick a football at the opening of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. His lab is working on ways of providing a sense of touch to these limbs so that the prosthetics feel more like a part of a person's body and less like an artificial appendage. Geoff Watts visits Nicolelis' laboratory to see just how near we are to achieving his aim on the football pitch. Geoff Watts looks into how scientists can use the mind to control artificial limbs. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Brain Scanning | 20070606 | Series exploring science at the cutting edge.
Peter Evans investigates recent advances in brain scanning technology which can reveal some of our innermost thoughts, predict our intentions and even know when we are telling the truth. These techniques are being used by commercial companies for marketing and lie detection.
Peter Evans investigates recent advances in brain scanning technology. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Build Me a Brain | 20130612 | When President Obama recently complained, that although "we can identify
Some researchers are already doing that - trying to understand the brain
"I believe these cultures are half-way to having a mind," says Potter.
Other researchers are building brains from inanimate materials - using
These devices can learn, remember and process information - but do they
Roland Pease reports on scientists building brains from scratch in the lab. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Can Maths Combat Terrorism? | 20141217 | Dr Hannah Fry investigates the hidden patterns behind terrorism and asks whether mathematics could be used to predict the next 9/11. When computer scientists decided to study the severity and frequency of 30,000 terrorist attacks worldwide, they found an distinctive pattern hiding in the data. Even though the events spanned 5,000 cities in 187 countries over 40 years, every single attack fitted neatly onto a curve, described by an equation known as a 'power law'. Now this pattern is helping mathematicians and social scientists understand the mechanisms underlying global terrorism. Could these modelling techniques be used to predict if, and when, another attack the size of 9/11 will occur? Producer: Michelle Martin. Can maths reveal hidden patterns in global terrorism? Dr Hannah Fry investigates. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Cancer Treatment | 20101103 | Is a new personalised drug for skin cancer set to revolutionise cancer medicine? In the first of a new series of Frontiers, Geoff Watts finds out about a new cancer drug that has had dramatic results in a previously almost untreatable type of skin cancer. Based on our knowledge of the human genome, he finds out how the drug works and what hope it offers for the future of cancer medicine .
The molecule, PLX 4032 made headlines earlier this year when it was shown to dramatically shrink tumours in people with malignant melanoma who had the right gene mutation. Because their prognosis was previously very poor the results, from experimental clinical trials, sent a wave of excitement through the cancer community.
While PLX4032 isn't on the market yet, could this kind of drug also pave the way for more personalised medicine in the treatment of other, more common cancers?
But is it enough to know the gene involved in a particular cancer, to then find a drug that can successfully target it? Unfortunately many cancers quickly become resistant to treatment and drug discovery is a time consuming and expensive process. But as more cancer genes are identified and the mechanisms for resistance understood will these hurdles, one day, be overcome? And will we, by the end of this decade, be using the genome sequence as the natural diagnostic for cancer?
Producer: Pam Rutherford.
Is a new personalised drug for skin cancer set to revolutionise cancer medicine? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Carbon Detectives | 20100728 | Richard Hollingham meets the scientists trying to track our carbon emissions.
International climate treaties are entirely based on national declarations of greenhouse-gas emissions. But there is at present no independent way of testing those declarations. National carbon accounts are carefully audited --- but so were the financial accounts of Greece, one expert notes, wryly.
On the other hand, once exhaust fumes have gone into the atmosphere, who knows where they go. Richard Hollingham meets the researchers who are trying to develop a network of tracking stations that can monitor greenhouse emissions, using a suite of chemical fingerprints. They have already shown that one key gas is on the increase, when national reports said it was being controlled. And although much of the expertise is in Britain, the UK government is dragging its heels some say, in supporting the network.
Producer: Roland Pease.
Richard Hollingham meets the scientists trying to track our carbon emissions. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Carl Linnaeus | 20070523 | Peter Evans pays tribute to Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, who was born 300 years ago. The Swedish scientist is credited with developing the system of nomenclature for all plants and animals that is still used today. Peter explores how the science has evolved over the centuries and how advances in genetics have transformed the work of a taxonomist.
Peter Evans pays tribute to Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, born 300 years ago. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Chronotypes | 20131218 | Are you a lark or an owl? Are you at your best in the morning or the evening? Linda Geddes meets the scientists who are exploring the differences between larks and owls. At the University of Surrey's Sleep Research Centre she talks to its director, Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, and finds out her own chronotype by filling in a questionnaire.
Linda discovers why we have circadian rhythms and why they don't all run at the same rate. Dr Louis Ptacek from the University of California, San Francisco, explains his investigation of the genes of families whose members get up very early in the morning and of those who get up very late.
She finds out why our sleep patterns change as we age - teenagers really aren't good at getting up in the morning. Professor Mary Carskadon from Brown University explains that although some schools have experimented with a later start there is no plan to put this into universal practice.
Linda talks to Professor Til Roenneberg from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich about his concept of social jetlag. And she hears about research trying to reduce the exhaustion often suffered by shift workers. Dr Steve Lockley of Harvard University tells her about using blue light to improve the wellbeing of people with medical conditions.
Linda Geddes explores research into the differences between morning and evening people. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Climate Change 30 Years On | 20070613 | Peter Evans asks why it has taken so long for climate change to be generally recognised. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Coral Reefs | 20080526 | Andrew Luck-Baker visits the Pacific islands of Palau to witness a mass spawning. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Cosmology | 20140709 | In March astronomers in the BICEP2 collaboration announced they had found gravitational waves from the Big Bang. But now the evidence is being questioned by other scientists. Dr Lucie Green reports on the debate and asks if scientists can ever know what happened billions of years ago when the universe was formed.
Have astronomers really found gravitational waves from the Big Bang as announced in March? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Crossrail - Tunnelling under London | 20130710 | Tracey Logan goes underground to find out how Crossrail is using the latest engineering techniques to create 26 miles of tunnels below London's tube network, sewers and foundations and through its erratic, sometimes unpredictable geology. She finds out about the latest science being used in Europe's biggest engineering project.
London sits on a varied geology of deposits of fine-grained sand, flint gravel beds, mottled clay, shelly beds which are sometimes mixed with pockets of water. This sheer variety has presented a challenge to London's tunnel engineers since the early 1800s.
Tracey goes on board one of the huge, 150 metre long, 1000 tonne tunnel boring machines as it makes its way beneath London's Oxford Street. At depths of up to 40 metres it can negotiate London's complex geology with incredible precision and can instantly adjust the pressure it applies at the cutting head to ensure there is no ground movement above.
Its precision engineering means it also follows a route which avoids the many existing foundations, sewers, and the tube network, sometimes travelling just centimetres past the London underground tunnels.
Tracey also finds out how unexploded ordnance from World War II still has to be carefully accounted for while digging beneath the capital.
The tunnel boring machines operate nearly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and so even has an onboard kitchen and bathroom facilities for the 20 or so operators who make up its 'tunnel gang'.
How 26 miles of precision-engineered tunnels are created through London's erratic geology. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Dark Matter | 20091123 | Most of our universe is missing. Scientists have called the stuff they can't find 'dark matter'. It may not have much bearing on our everyday lives, but the current theories about how the universe behaves depend on discovering the dark matter.
The search for this elusive 'stuff' is currently hotting up with new experiments about to start. Sue Nelson joins a UK group a kilometre under the ground in North Yorkshire as they put the finishing touches to their apparatus. And she learns that they have put their money on the 'dark matter' being something called WIMPS.
Sue Nelson joins scientists down a mine on their search for the elusive dark matter. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Desalination | 20081117 | Gareth Mitchell investigates whether or not desalination is the answer to global water shortages.
He visits water companies in Spain and the UK that are investing substantial sums of money in desalination technology, and also considers the views of critics of desalination, who cite the high levels of energy it requires and the waste caused by leaky pipes.
Gareth Mitchell asks whether or not desalination is the answer to global water shortages. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Digital Medicine | 20071128 | Science journalist Philip Ball looks at the dawn of a brave new era of medical technology that promises to revolutionise the way we receive health care.
Digital medicine aims to take health care out of the hospital and into the home using simple devices found in our mobile phones and home computers.
Philip visits Imperial College in London to talk to Professor Chris Toumazou and his colleagues at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Professor Toumazou is using wireless technology to monitor and treat patients without them having to set foot in a hospital.
One of these devices is a digital plaster that will allow doctors to monitor their patients' vital signs any time and from anywhere in the world. He's also working on an artificial pancreas that can monitor and supply insulin to someone with diabetes, in exactly the same way a healthy pancreas would, without the need for daily monitoring and uncomfortable injections.
The true frontier, however, is to combine a computer chip with DNA to create the ultimate in personalised healthcare, drugs that are designed and prescribed specifically to your body's needs.
Philip Ball talks to the team at Imperial and discovers whether a visit to the GP's surgery or hospital is about to become a thing of the past
Philip Ball takes a look at a new wave of medical inventions. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Disgust | 20071226 | Claudia Hammond investigates new research connecting moral revulsion with physiology. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| DNA Analysis of Asylum Seekers | 20091214 | Gerry Northam explores proposals to check asylum seekers' credentials using DNA analysis. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Driverless cars | 20140604 | Most traffic accidents are caused by human error. Engineers are designing vehicles with built in sensors that send messages to other cars, trucks, bikes and even pedestrians, to prevent collisions happening. The idea is to make the vehicles react to whatever's going on faster than the human drivers.
Jack Stewart drives around the university town of Ann Arbor, in Michigan, in some of the many vehicles that are fitted with experimental devices in the world's largest connected vehicles project. He finds out how the system works from researchers at UMTRI, the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute, and Kirk Steudle, Director, Michigan Department of Transportation.
Jack has a ride in Google's driverless car which has no steering wheel and no pedals. Google's Chris Urmson explains the company's approach to autonomous vehicles.
Jack visits Stanford University's driverless car project where Professor Chris Gerdes shows him Shelley, an automated Audi that races around a track at speed as well as a human driver. Chris is collaborating with a philosopher to explore some of the difficult questions around autonomous vehicles, such as who's liable if there's an accident. Is it the human or the car?
Jack Stewart meets the engineers inventing vehicles that drive themselves. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Earthquakes in Southeast Asia | 20091221 | Roland Pease reports on the continuing threat of earthquakes in southeast Asia. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Energy Harvesting | 20080512 | Gareth Mitchell meets the scientists trying to harvest energy from unlikely sources. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Engineering Flu | 20120606 | Two teams of virologists found themselves at the heart of bioterrorism maelstrom late last year when their studies on mutant bird flu were suppressed by US authorities. While security experts feared the reports were recipes for bioweapons of mass destruction, the researchers argued they held important lessons for the threat of natural flu pandemics developing in the wild. Now the authorities have backed down and the reports have been released, Kevin Fong hears how tiny variations in the genes of bird flu can completely change the behaviour of the pathogens. And whether deliberate genetic manipulation in the lab can replicate the natural genetic variations occurring in farms around the world. In 2009, the new strain of H1N1 flu emerged from a few villages in Mexico to infect the world in weeks. What experts fear is that a simple genetic change to H5N1 bird flu could allow it to spread as fast, but with far deadlier consequences. They argue that by identifying dangerous variants in the lab first, we'd be better prepared with vaccines ahead of the danger. Producer Roland Pease. Genetically engineered bird flu - lessons for pandemic preparations. Kevin Fong reports. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Epigenetics | 20101208 | Adam Rutherford asks how much of our lives' experiences, such as diet and pollution, is passed onto our children, as well as our genes. These changes are called epigenetic.
Throughout our lives our genes become changed by the environment - by things such as our diet, radiation, pollution and smoking. These events have consequences for our health. The view from classical genetics was that we don't pass on any of these defects onto our children. When we reproduce, the genes in our eggs and sperm are wiped clean.
In the 1980s there was the realisation that a child's genes are not always stripped of the experiences of its parents. In other words, what parents do in their lives can be passed onto their offspring. In the last few years, there has been a massive increase in the amount of research into what's called epigenetic inheritance. This year scientists have announced that work in rodents has shown that poor diet and parental neglect can be seen in the genes of their offspring. Another piece of research in rats, published in Nature, demonstrated that if fathers had a high fat diet, their daughters can develop a form of diabetes, even though they themselves weren't overweight or eating a high fat diet. This means that the fathers' sperm had been irrevocably altered by what they had been eating.
And there are some studies in humans that suggest that epigenetic effects are at work. These are retrospective studies, as it is impossible to control the lives of people in same way as researchers can with laboratory rodents.
Researchers have been following the outcome of the women who were pregnant during the prolonged famine in Holland at the end of the Second World War. Girls born to these women have been found to have twice the usual risk of developing schizophrenia. The lack of food produced changes in the mothers' DNA which could have caused changes in the brain of the daughters.
Producer: Deborah Cohen.
Do our children inherit the impact of our life experiences as well as our genes? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Forensic Phonetics | 20121212 | Many crimes are planned, executed and sometimes gloated over using mobile phones. And the move to digital means that recordings are cheap and easy to make for the criminals themselves, as well as for their victims and witnesses. Ranging from death threats left on voicemails and hoax 999 calls to fraudulent calls to banks and conversations between terrorists, phoneticians analyse the minute acoustic components of the human voice to determine not only what was said but to create a profile of the culprit, or work out if a suspect's voice matches the voice in the criminal recording. While it's not possible to identify a unique 'voiceprint', as it is with fingerprints and DNA, speech scientists are developing new ways of teasing out the distinctive characteristics in human speech to improve their ability to identify a particular speaker. Forensic audio specialists can now determine with surprising accuracy whether a digital recording has been tampered with, and when exactly it was made. The gentle 'hum', that is constantly emitted from electrical power sources, is embedded in digital recordings. So by extracting this 'hum', which is emitted in a random pattern, forensic scientists can now pinpoint the date and time of the recording. Rebecca Morelle looks at some of the new research in this growing area of forensics, including the credibility of ear witness accounts and whether it's possible to distinguish hoax 999 calls from genuine ones. This branch of forensics has played a crucial role in a number of high profile cases, including the conviction of John Humble as the hoax caller claiming to be the Yorkshire Ripper, and identifying the mystery cougher who tried to defraud the gameshow 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'. Producer: Beth Eastwood. Rebecca Morelle explores how the forensic science of speech is helping to solve crime. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Future Of Particle Physics | 20121107 | Finding the Higgs boson on July 4th was the last piece in physicists' Standard model of matter. But Tracey Logan discovers there's much more for them to find out at the Large Hadron Collider. To start with there is a lot of work to establish what kind of Higgs boson it is. Tracey visits CERN and an experiment called LHCb which is trying to find out why there's a lot more matter than anti-matter in the universe today. Dr Tara Shears of Liverpool University is her guide. Tracey also talks to physicists who are hoping to find dark matter in the debris of the collisions at the LHC. Scientists know there's plenty of dark matter in the universe, from its effects on galaxies, but they don't know what it is. Tracey discovers that this fact isn't stopping the particle physicists carrying out experiments. Tracey Logan asks what particle physicists are doing after finding the Higgs boson. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Future Vaccines | 20100804 | The middle of the last century was a boom time for vaccine makers. Many common diseases, especially of childhood, began to resemble a distant memory. Researchers and manufacturers were eyeing up a shopping list of future targets. But then things went wrong. Some diseases proved much more complex. Litigation prompted by real or imagined side effects began to worry the drug companies. Profits started to slide. Many manufactures got out of the business. The best idea ever for preventing disease seemed to be going nowhere.
That's now changed. Advances in biotechnology and the advent of a couple of new, commercially successful vaccines have injected a new confidence into the industry. In spite of repeated failures to deal with two of the highest profile diseases, malaria and HIV, vaccine researchers have rewritten their shopping list. This now includes not just the traditional targets - the classic infectious diseases - but even some types of cancer, autoimmune disease and smoking!
Geoff Watts reviews past ups and down of vaccine making, and explains why its fortunes have now changed. Examining the enterprise in commercial as well as scientific terms, he investigates whether the commerce and the science of vaccine development are likely to confront new hurdles - or if the future really does offer the prospect of hitherto unattained levels of immunity, a new golden age for vaccines.
PRODUCER: Martin Redfern.
Geoff Watts looks past failures and future hopes for vaccine development. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Geo-engineering | 20131211 | Geoengineering is a controversial approach to dealing with climate change. Gaia Vince explores putting chemicals in the stratosphere to stop solar energy reaching the earth.
When volcanoes erupt they put sulphur in the stratosphere. The particles reflect solar rays back into space and the planet cools down. Scientists are suggesting that it could be possible to put sulphur into the stratosphere using specialised aircraft or a very long pipe. But if this was implemented there could be impacts on rainfall and the ozone layer.
Another idea is to spray seawater to whiten clouds that would reflect more energy away from the earth.
Gaia Vince talks to the researchers who are considering solar radiation management. She also hears from social scientists who are finding out what the public think about the idea and who are asking who should make decisions about implementing this way of cooling the planet.
Gaia Vince asks if geoengineering by blocking the sun could stop the earth warming up. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| GM Crops | 20091207 | Negotiators at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen are hoping to agree a new global climate treaty to limit greenhouse emissions.
Richard Hollingham discusses the way biotechnology can help us develop new crops able to withstand harsher growing conditions. He talks to some of the biotech companies that want the European Commission to relax its attitude towards GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Richard also talks to the EC itself about its policy on GM products.
Crops genetically adapted for climate change need to be drought and pest resistant and able to thrive in poor quality soil. They also need to provide improved yields. These crops are controversial, especially in Europe. Historically, European legislators have taken a very cautious attitude towards genetically modified food and animal feedstuff.
Currently, the European Commission permits the import of genetically modified cotton, maize, oilseed rape, soybean and sugar beet for human and animal consumption. So far, the EC has issued just a single licence permitting one variety of GM maize to be grown in Europe.
At present, there are about 50 GM products awaiting approval from the European Commission, of which 19 are for cultivation. The companies that produce biotech crops want the EC to relax its moratorium on new product approvals. Apart from the obvious commercial opportunities, they argue that if Europe relaxes its attitude towards GM crops, developing nations will be more likely to accept them too, and it is the developing nations that will be most affected by climate change. In that sense, Europe is becoming a crucial battlefield as companies lobby to get new crops licensed for cultivation.
There is still huge opposition within Europe to genetically modified crops. But is climate change beginning to alter the terms of the debate? If the world is to sustain its current population levels at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to cultivate traditional crops, have we now reached the point when Europe needs to take a more tolerant attitude towards the cultivation of GM crops?
Is now the time right for Europe to allow widespread cultivation of GM crops? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Graphene - the new wonder material | 20100825 | Discovered in Manchester just a few years ago, graphene is an atomically thin form of carbon that looks set to transform technology. In the short time it has been known, graphene has been found to be among the toughest of materials, has almost no resistance to electricity, is chemically inert, impermeable to gases, almost completely transparent ... . Potential uses include the ultimate in nano-electronics, touch screens, hydrogen storage for zero-emission cars, solar panels, DNA sequencing, ultracapacitors for the next generation of electric cars, chemical sensors ...
Roland Pease reports on a new form of carbon that looks set to transform technology. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Green Ships | 20071212 | Gareth Mitchell examines attempts to introduce green technology to the shipping industry. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Gut Microbiota | 20131113 | What is it about the microbes in our guts that can have such an impact on our lives?
The human gut has around 100 trillion bacterial cells from up to 1,000 different species. Every person's microbiota (the body's bacterial make-up) is different as a result of the effects of diet and lifestyle, and the childhood source of bacteria.
Scientists are learning more and more about the importance of these bacteria, as well as the viruses, fungi and other microbes that live in our gastrointestinal tracts. Without them, our digestion, immune system and overall health would be compromised.
Adam Hart talks to researchers who are discovering how important a balanced and robust gut microflora is for our health. And he asks how this can be maintained and what happens when things go wrong.
New insights into the important relationship we have with microbes that live in our gut. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Hubble Space Telescope | 20071205 | In this week's Frontiers, Andrew Luck-Baker goes to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre to report on preparations for the fourth - and final - Servicing Mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Since its launch in 1990, Hubble has revolutionised our understanding of deep space and the universe. Its high quality images have captured the imagination of the world.
But the telescope is beginning to show its age, and NASA has announced an ambitious Servicing Mission to refurbish and upgrade Hubble.
As well as replacing batteries and gyroscopes, the astronauts will repair two instruments that have stopped working.
The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) failed in 2004. The spectrograph separates light into its component colours. This allows scientists to examine a distant planet's temperature, chemical composition, density and motion.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) stopped working in 2007. The ACS is a wide field camera and is able to conduct broad surveys of the universe. A million second exposure on this camera produced the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image, NASA's deepest view of the cosmos.
The astronauts will also install two new instruments. A more powerful wide field camera, Wide Field Camera 3, will carry out wide field imaging across the whole spectral range, from ultraviolet to infrared. A new spectrograph, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), will improve Hubble's sensitivity to the spectrum.
Andrew talks to two crew members who will be part of the mission. Scott Altman will command the space shuttle. John Grunsfeld, an astronaut and astronomer, will be one of the space walkers. Both men have visited Hubble on previous servicing missions.
Andrew also talks to ex-astronaut Jeff Hoffmann and members of the support team at the Goddard Space Flight Centre.
The mission is scheduled for August 7, 2008.
Andrew Luck-Baker meets the astronauts preparing to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Human Microbes | 20110601 | Our body is the playground for around 100 trillion microbes, hiding in our mouth, nose, guts, skin and genitals. In the first in a new series of Frontiers, Geoff Watts visits the Human Microbiome Project in the US, where they're sequencing the genomes of bacteria which live on our body. Our microbes help us digest food in our stomach, produce natural moisturisers on our skin and synthesise vitamins in our intestine. 'We need to start thinking of ourselves as super-organisms,' says Dr Julie Segre, senior investigator at the US National Institute of Health. 'This is the second genome - the bacterial genomes as well as the human genomes, all of that is part of the true genetic content of a human.' The Human Microbiome Project aims to catalogue 3,000 microbes on our body and sequence their genes. The theory is that we have co-evolved with our microbes in order to defend our bodies against pathogens. Geneticists are aiming to find out what constitutes a healthy microbial community, and what happens when the group is invaded by 'bad' bacteria. Geoff also talks to a group of scientists from MetaHIT - a European project which concentrates on the human gut. They have found that we all fall into one of three distinct types, depending on the dominant group of bacteria living there. New research has suggested that pathogenic microbes could be implicated in a whole host of diseases, including obesity, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, arthritis and autism. We may find there are new links between the human microbiome and diseases that today we don't think of having any underlying microbial component,' says Claire Fraser-Liggett, Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland. The hope is that this research may pave the way for more personalised treatments which could help get our bacterial communities back on the right track. Producer: Michelle Martin. In a new series, Geoff Watts investigates the bacteria flourishing on our bodies. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Hydrogen for Transport | 20100811 | Vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells promise pollution free transport as their waste product is water. The idea of using hydrogen has been around for decades but has not so far gone much beyond a few experimental projects. Gareth Mitchell explores if hydrogen can ever realistically replace oil as the fuel for mass transport. So far there have been a number of demonstration projects of buses in a number of European cities, including London and Oxford, and at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. But now there is an increasing interest in using hydrogen. Gareth visits researchers in Birmingham and in Germany who have designed fuel cells that are already powering cars that can travel for 100 miles at up to 50 mph. He discovers that there is a growing network of hydrogen stations around the world and many of the German based manufacturers are working on vehicles that are powered in full or partly by fuel cells. Does hydrogen have a future?
Gareth Mitchell asks what happened to hydrogen cars. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Lunar Transient Phenomena | 20081103 | Andrew Luck-Baker investigates the mystery of fleeting patches of bright light over areas on the Moon.
A new project is deploying robotic telescopes to try and establish the truth about these lunar transient phenomena, or TLPs, with some believing them to be gas eruptions from lunar volcanoes or escaping via fractures made when the Moon was struck by an asteriod millions of years ago. Some even speculate that the gases could be useful to astronauts who may colonise the Moon in years to come.
Andrew Luck-Baker explores the mystery of patches of bright light over areas on the Moon. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Medicines for Children | 20080602 | Graham Easton draws on his experience as a doctor and a father to reveal why medicines for children lag behind adults. Many of the drugs that are given to children have never been properly tested on them to make sure they are safe and effective. New European laws, however, are forcing companies to recruit babies and children into trials. The UK government has committed twenty million pounds to kick-start the process.
Graham Easton reveals why medicines for children lag behind adults. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Mission to Mars | 20080505 | Next year, Russian cosmonauts will simulate a mission to Mars. Richard Hollingham reports. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Muscle Wastage | 20100818 | We're all familiar by now with being told to "use it or lose it" when it comes to certain aspects of our health and bodies, and never more so than for muscles.
But in this edition of Frontiers, Vivienne Parry hears how new research in to muscle wastage is turning the accepted view on its head.
Startling results from a large-scale study have seen elderly peoples' muscles completely rebuilt through diet and exercise.
The detailed molecular pathways within muscles are beginning to be understood well enough for drug companies to target new ways of replacing what is lost, offering hope to the many thousands of people in Britain who suffer from muscle wastage due to illness or ageing.
Vivienne Parry reports on new research into tackling muscle wastage. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Nanofoods | 20081020 | Sue Broom talks to the food industry and academics who are making use of the quirky physical laws of the extremely small to create 'nano foods'.
Scientists are able to manipulate particles at the nano scale, changing the way that food tastes and feels, and even improving its nutritional content. Sue examines whether or not nanoparticles are safe to eat, and considers what impact, if any, they might have on the environment.
Sue Broom talks to the food industry who are manipulating foods at the nano scale. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Nanoparticles | 20101117 | Nanoparticles are all around us. Some are man-made, others occur naturally. Because they're so tiny - one nanometre is one billionth of a metre - nanoparticles can only be seen through an electron microscope. Richard hears more about their characteristics and potential from Richard Moore at the Institute of Nanotechnology in Stirling.
Nanoparticles have unique physical properties, and scientists are looking for ways to exploit these characteristics. Nanoparticles are currently used in medicine, in food, in clothes and cosmetics. In the future, nanoparticles could also be used to help improve energy generation and storage. They might also help us remove contaminants from polluted water.
In this edition of Frontiers, Richard Hollingham investigates how a better understanding of the properties of nanoparticles is helping researchers develop novel medical treatments. He talks to Dr Simon Holland and Wendy Knight at GlaxoSmithKline about research into using nanoparticles to deliver therapeutic agents to precise locations in the body. Richard also visits MagForce, a German research company, that's developing a novel therapy using heated nanoparticles of iron oxide to destroy brain cancers.
These are beneficial developments, but as scientists find more and more uses for nanoparticles, concern's growing about the possible cumulative impact of so many microscopic particles in our environment. Ian Colbeck, professor of environment science at Essex University says that because they are so small, nanoparticles can be absorbed through our skin or when we breathe. The behaviour and characteristics of nanoparticles change according to their size and density, so it's very hard to predict what longer-term effects they might be having.
Producer: John Watkins.
Richard Hollingham asks if legislation to control nanoparticles is adequate. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Neanderthal DNA | 20071121 | Andrew Luck-Baker describes scientists' efforts to sequence Neanderthal DNA. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| New Space To Fly | 20141203 | As our skies become more crowded Jack Stewart examines the long awaited modernisation of air traffic control. With traffic predicted to reach 17 million by 2030 more flights will mean more delays. For many a new approach to controlling flights is long overdue since aircraft still follow old and often indirect routes around the globe, communication between the ground and air is still by VHF radio, and any flexibility is heavily constrained by a fragmented airspace operated by many national authorities. Jack Stewart examines how aviation technologists have come up with a radical solution: it enables pilots once airborne, to choose their own route. 'Free Routing ', it's argued, will allow more direct flights, no planes to be caught up in holding patterns, reduced fuel emissions and flights departing and arriving on time. Crucially, free routing will enable a tripling of flights than currently we're capable of controlling. But will the ability of pilots to choose their own routes increase the risk of collision? Researchers argue it will in fact produce even safer skies. Jack Stewart visits NATS air traffic control centre that annually looks after the safety of over 2 million over British airspace to hear how such a system could evolve. Jack finds out how free routing could work from the engineers at Indra UK - who're trialling such a system in airspace controlled by the NATS Prestwick air traffic control centre. In a new approach they're turning 'reactive' air traffic control into a more strategic approach with computer designed flight trajectories utilizing much of the currently underused satellite navigation that is fitted on modern aircraft. It will enable aircraft to be safely spaced closer together and at the same time predict potential 'conflicts' of spacing much further ahead of the routes being taken, leaving less room for human error. And as automation begins to play a greater role in all aspects of flight planning and control is the era of pilotless planes moving a step closer? Producer: Adrian Washbourne Jack Stewart meets the pioneers redesigning our international airspace. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Nitrogen Fixing | 20131204 | 3.5 billion people are alive today because of a single chemical process. The Haber-Bosch process takes Nitrogen from the air and makes ammonia, from which synthetic fertilizers allow farmers to feed our massive population.
Ammonia is a source of highly reactive nitrogen, suitable not just for fertilizer but also as an ingredient in bomb making and thousands of other applications.
Now we make around 100 million tonnes of ammonia annually, and spread most of it on our fields.
But this is a very inefficient way to use what amounts to 1-2% of the planet's energy needs. Only around 20% of fertilizer made ends up in our food.
Prof. Andrea Sella explores some of the alternative ways we might make fertilizer.
Legumes, such as peas and beans, allow certain cells in their roots to become infected by a specific type of bacteria. In return, these bacteria provide them with their own fertilizer.
Could we infect the plants we want to grow for food - such as cereals - in a similar way to cut down the climatic and environmental impact of Haber-Bosch?
Prof Andrea Sella looks at efforts to reduce our dependence on the Haber-Bosch process. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Nuclear Fusion | 20090706 | Gareth Mitchell asks if nuclear fusion could at last be close to generating energy.
Nuclear fusion is the holy grail of alternative energy. It is clean, green and could supply limitless energy to the world, but despite decades of research in some of the most expensive science facilities in the world, it has remained an elusive goal. Scientists working at a new experimental facility in California are set to use giant laser beams to try and initiate nuclear fusion.
If nuclear fusion could be made to work commercially, the energy released will be of stellar proportions; this, after all, is the process that powers the Sun. The total energy that could ever be created using wind, wave and solar power is ridiculously small by comparison. Nuclear power, which is generated by fission not fusion, requires uranium - which will run out - and, of course, generates radioactive waste.
Gareth witnesses the start of a new era of nuclear fusion experiments. He also goes to the Joint European Torus facility in Oxfordshire, which has been using a different technique to create nuclear fusion for nearly 30 years. He finds out about ITER, the next big fusion experiment, which is just being built in the south of France.
Gareth Mitchell asks if nuclear fusion could at last be close to generating energy. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Origins of Childhood | 20090622 | Andrew Luck-Baker asks why humans, unlike other primates, have such a long childhood. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Oxytocin | 20130717 | 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 California, 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.
Linda Geddes asks if taking the hormone oxytocin can make people more sociable. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Plate Tectonics and Life | 20130703 | 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 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. And extraordinarily, some say that life itself has changed the forces in plate tectonics, and helped to shape the world.
Roland Pease on the idea that life on early Earth led to the evolution of plate tectonics. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Population Growth and Global Warming | 20091130 | Ahead of the 2009 Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, Geoff Watts chairs a special Frontiers debate on one of global warming's most contentious issues - population growth. Delegates in Copenhagen will address how to reduce greenhouse gases, blamed for warming the planet. But in focusing on energy production, is there a factor that is being ignored because it is too controversial - the sheer numbers of us on the planet? Geoff and guests grapple with the complex issues surrounding population and climate change. If there is a relationship, what can be done about it?
Joining Geoff on the panel are:
John Guillebaud, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at University College London
David Satterthwaite, Senior Fellow in Human Settlements at the International Institute for Environment and Development
Karen Newman, Co-ordinator at the Population and Sustainability Network.
Geoff Watts explores the relationship between global warming and a changing population. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Power Transmission | 20140618 | Gaia Vince looks at the future of power transmission. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| Scientific Evidence | 20071219 | Are we giving science a fair hearing in the courtroom?
There's no doubt that scientific techniques like DNA profiling, microscopic textiles analysis and even shoeprints can be incredibly powerful tools. But could the public's misunderstanding of the very nature of scientific evidence be perverting the course of justice?
It's too easy perhaps to be seduced by the apparent ability of scientific techniques to deliver definitive answers. How far is scientific evidence a matter of cool, incontrovertible fact and how far a matter of professional opinion?
Peter Evans is joined by four people who care deeply about the way science is represented and sometimes misrepresented in the courts: Helena Kennedy QC; Director of LGC Forensics Angela Gallop; Lecturer in Law at Leeds University Dr Carole McCartney and Chief Constable Tony Lake.
Serious criminal cases seem to increasingly hinge on scientific evidence. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Self-Healing Materials | 20131127 | Quentin Cooper takes a look at the new materials that can mend themselves. Researchers are currently developing bacteria in concrete which, once awakened, excrete lime to fill any cracks. In South America you can choose a car paint that heals its own scratches. And there are even gold atoms which can migrate to mend tiny breaks in jet turbine blades.
Engineers normally design things so the likelihood of breaking is minimised. But by embracing the inevitability of breakage, a new class of materials which can mend cracks and fissures before you can see them may extend the lives of our cars, engines, buildings and aeroplanes far beyond current capability.
Quentin Cooper takes a look at the new materials that can mend themselves. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Stem Cells | 20090629 | Sue Broom catches up on progress in stem cell research. She talks to leading scientists in the field and finds out when treatments and cures from our own bodies could become a realistic prospect.
Stem cells have long held the promise to cure diseases such as heart disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, sickle cell anaemia and type 1 diabetes, as well as repair damaged tissue from injury such as spinal cord damage. But are they ready to be tried in humans?
Sue Broom catches up on progress in stem cell research. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Superconductors | 20070530 | Peter Evans recalls the discovery 20 years ago of materials that conduct electricity without loss at relatively high temperatures. A Nobel prize went to the scientists responsible and huge technological advances were promised, such as high-speed levitating trains and super-efficient power generators. But after the excitement has died down, are these high-temperature superconductors living up to expectations?
Peter Evans asks if high-temperature superconductors are delivering what was expected. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Swarming robots | 20140702 | Adam Hart looks at how new developments in understanding insect behaviour, plant cell growth and sub cellular organisation are influencing research into developing robot swarms.
Biological systems have evolved elegant ways for large numbers of autonomous agents to govern themselves. Staggering colonies built by ants and termites emerge from a decentralized, self-governing system: swarm intelligence. Now, taking inspiration from termites, marine animals and even plants, European researchers are developing autonomous robot swarms, setting them increasingly difficult challenges, such as navigating a maze, searching for an object or surveying an area. At the same time, an American team has announced that its group of robots can autonomously build towers, castles and even a pyramid.
Adam Hart reports on the latest developments in controlling groups of robots, and asks why models taken from the behaviour of social insects such as bees, ants and termites may be far more complex than previously thought. He also delves deep into the cells of plants looking at how the physical and chemical triggers for plant growth might be useful in robot design.
Adam Hart on how insect and cell structure research is helping develop swarming robots. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Synthetic Biology | 20090713 | Richard Hollingham investigates the practical and moral questions raised by synthetic biology.
He meets some of the scientists who are designing 'new life' and visits the new Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation at Imperial College, London. Richard talks to biologist and entrepreneur Craig Venter, whose research team has recently transformed one species of bacteria into another by gene transplantation.
He also discusses some of the moral and ethical issues raised by the creation of synthetic life, and asks if a new regulatory framework is needed that both protects the public and provides scientists with unambiguous boundaries for their work.
Richard Hollingham investigates the questions raised by synthetic biology. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| The end of Moore's Law? | 20101201 | Ever smarter, faster and cheaper silicon chips have driven the computing revolution but many believe this rapid pace of technological change is about to grind to a halt.
We take it for granted that mobile phones today do as much, or more, than the cumbersome personal computers we bought just a decade before. But many industry insiders believe silicon chip manufacturers are about to hit the buffers. And without the hardware to support them, computers may not continue to evolve at the astonishing rate to which we have grown accustomed.
Arranging transistors a thousand times smaller than a human hair on a silicon chip isn't easy but the ability to manipulate such miniscule entities is just one of the challenges chip manufacturers are facing and it's probably not the most serious.
When transistors are smaller than this, silicon starts to lose the very properties that make it so useful for building logic circuits. "It's like having light switches that are made from soggy pieces of pasta. They just don't work," says Rich Howard.
In 1965, Intel employee Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors that manufacturers could fit on a silicon chip would double every two years. At the time a naive and rather glib remark that has since become known as Moore's Law and has driven the rapid pace of technological change that we've witnessed over the last four decades. But now even Moore himself is clear: this dramatic rate of progress must soon come to an end.
Roland Pease asks if this is really the end for Moore's Law, or is there something new around the corner to fuel the next technological step to smaller and faster devices.
Is it the end of the road for the computer revolution? Roland Pease investigates. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| The First Forests | 20081027 | Reporting on new discoveries that reveal how the first forests transformed the planet 380 million years ago.
The latest fossil finds include strange leafless trees and entire petrified, wooded landscapes. These first forests had a profound impact on our planet's atmosphere and the course of animal evolution. What is more, they may be able to tell us about what to expect as we change today's atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
How the first forests transformed the planet 380 million years ago. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| The Gamma Ray Skies | 20070516 | What causes the cosmic explosions of gamma rays observed by scientists? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |
| The Placenta | 20091116 | The placenta is the baby's life support system, but much is still not known about how it works and how to help when things go wrong. The charity Tommy's has created the UK's first placenta clinic in Manchester. Sue Broom meets the patients hoping that the scientists in the labs there can discover why the placenta can fail to implant or produce the wide blood vessels crucial to the baby's growth.
Sue Broom visits the UK's first specialist placenta clinic in Manchester. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| The Power of the Unconscious | 20131120 | We like to think that we are in control of our lives, of what we do, think and feel. But, as Geoff Watts discovers, scientists are now revealing that this is just an illusion.
A simple magic trick reveals just how limited our conscious awareness of the world is, and how easy it is to fool us.
So if our conscious brain can cope with so little, what is responsible for the rest? Science is starting to reveal the crucial role of a silent partner inside our heads, that we are completely unaware of - our unconscious.
In this programme, Geoff enlists the help of not just brain scientists, but a conjuror and a musician to reveal the pivotal role the unconscious plays in pretty much everything we do, think and feel. This new-found knowledge is enabling scientists to harness its powers for both medical and military benefit.
The crucial role of our unconscious, and how scientists are now harnessing its powers. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| The Rosetta Mission | 20141112 | The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to 67P/Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko reached its most dramatic moment on 12th November. BBC News correspondent Jonathan Amos has covered the event for a special edition of Radio 4's 'Frontiers' programme.
In August, the Rosetta spacecraft was the first to go into orbit around a comet; its images of the extraordinarily rugged landscape of this 4 kilometre space mountain of ice and space dust have already left everyone awestruck. Previous missions have been fleeting fly-bys.
On the day of the landing the orbiting mothercraft released a small robotic probe, named Philae, to fall and land on the cometary surface. It will be the first to sample and analyse directly the make-up of a comet, and photograph a comet's landscape from an explorer's eyeview.
Jonathan Amos presents 'Frontiers' from mission control at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany on the day of the landing.
The probe's deployment is not the final stage of the Rosetta mission. The mothercraft will accompany Comet C-G for the next year as both approach the Sun and then turn back out into deep space. Rosetta will be making measurements all the way as the comet's icy nucleus heats up and produces its great tail of gas and dust. Flying Rosetta as the comet becomes florid will also be a tricky business.
Comets are widely believed to be made of material unchanged since the planets came into existence, 4.5 billion years ago. They represent the original stuff of which planets were built. The Rosetta orbiter's and lander's findings may well tell us whether comets brought water and life's chemical ingredients to get life started on Earth. Jonathan talks to mission scientists and other comet experts about why they want to study comets in such detail and what Rosetta should tell us about comets in their own right as the most spectacular and most enigmatic objects in the solar system.
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.
Billed as 'the sexiest space mission ever', did Rosetta's probe land safely on its comet? Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Transit Of Venus | 20120530 | First of another series of programmes looking at new frontiers of scientific discovery. Astronomer Marek Kukula from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich explores the scientific implications of the forthcoming transit of Venus across the face of the Sun, a rare astronomical event that will not occur again until 2117. Previous transits have helped establish fundamental facts about our solar system, including the distance and relative positions of all the planets that orbit our sun. But now, the forthcoming transit in June 2012, the last this century, will help planet hunters searching for other worlds across the galaxy (exo-planets). As Marek discovers, technology now makes it possible to pinpoint not only a planet's mass, size, and distance from its star but we can also establish whether it has an atmosphere and what that atmosphere might consist of and therefore whether it could theoretically support life. Thanks to the next transit event, the search for another Earth has taken a bold step forward. Marek Kukula explores the forthcoming transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Vagus Nerve | 20141126 | Many people are living with chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel conditions in which the body attacks itself. Although drug treatments have improved over recent years they do not work for everyone and can have serious side effects.
Now researchers such as neurologist Dr Kevin Tracey of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, and rheumatologist Professor Paul-Peter Tak of Amsterdam University, are trying a new approach to improving the lives of these patients. They are firing electrical pulses along the vagus nerve, a major nerve that connects the brain with all the organs. The technology to do this has been around for some decades as stimulating the vagus nerve has been used to help people who have epilepsy that isn't controlled with drugs since the 1990s.
Gaia Vince talks to these pioneers of this new field of research. And she hears how there may be ways of improving the tone of the vagal nerve using meditation.
Can stimulating the vagus nerve improve health? Gaia Vince explores this new research area Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Virtual Therapy | 20141224 | "e-Therapy" has come a long way since the (slightly tongue in cheek) days of ELIZA, a very early attempt at computer based psychotherapy. ELIZA was little more than an algorithm that spotted patterns in words and returned empty, yet meaningful-sounding questions back at the user.
All sorts of e-therapies are now available to help low-moderate level mental health issues.
But could Virtual Reality technology bring the next great leap in our understanding of mental processes, and, in turn, be the basis of future psychotherapies? Quentin Cooper meets some of the researchers trying to find out.
Quentin Cooper looks at the therapeutic possibilites of virtual reality. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Whatever happened to biofuels? | 20130626 | Whatever happened to biofuels? They were seen as the replacement for fossil fuels until it was realised they were being grown on land that should have been used for food crops. But now there is serious research into new ways of producing biofuels, from waste materials, from algae and from bacteria.
Gaia Vince takes to the water of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland where Professor Matthew Dring and Dr Karen Mooney from Queens University, Belfast, are experimenting in growing algae that could be turned into fuel. She visits Professor Alison Smith's algae lab at Cambridge University. Graham Ellis from Solazyme in California explains how his company has already made fuel from algae that has been sold at the pumps and powered a plane, in a mixture with conventional fuel. And Professor Nick Turner at Manchester University and Professor John Love at Exeter University talk about how they are manipulating bacteria to make diesel.
Gaia Vince asks if we can ever run our vehicles on biofuels from algae or bacteria. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men? | 20121114 | In the UK today, male life expectancy is 78 years old, whereas women will on average live four years longer. Evolutionary biologist Dr Yan Wong looks at the latest evidence suggesting that where ageing is concerned, men seem to be at a genetic disadvantage. From research on ancient Korean eunuchs to laboratory fruit flies, new studies seek the answer to why males across the animal kingdom live faster and die younger. So, is the gender gap here to stay? Dr Yan Wong explores new theories on gender and ageing. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsibl |
| X-Rays for Peace | 20081110 | Adam Hart-Davis visits the SESAME X-ray project in Jordan. Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsib |