Rebecca Morelle talks to explorers of deep ocean trenches, from film-maker James Cameron to biologists discovering dark realms of weird pink gelatinous fish and gigantic crustaceans. The deepest regions of the ocean lie between 6,000 and 11,000 metres. Oceanographers term this the Hadal Zone. It exists where the floor of abyss plunges into long trough-like features, known as ocean trenches. The Hadal zone is the final frontier of exploration and ecological science on the planet. At its most extr...
Sep 22, 2014•27 min
Gaia Vince looks at the future of power transmission. As power generation becomes increasingly mixed and demand increases, what does the grid of the future look like?
Sep 15, 2014•27 min
Accidents happen in science labs all over the world, but when you’re working with deadly pathogens the consequences can be disastrous. The reputation of America’s ‘gold standard’ The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Georgia has recently become tarnished as news emerged that 80 workers were inadvertently exposed to live anthrax, and a deadly strain of flu was accidentally sent to another lab. Further reports of tick-box safety culture, lethal samples sent in ziplock plastic bags and ...
Sep 08, 2014•27 min
Alana Saarinen is a 13-year-old girl who lives with her mum and dad in Michigan, USA. She loves playing golf and the piano, listening to music and hanging out with friends. In those respects, she's like many teenagers around the world. Except she's not, because Alana is one of a handful of people in the world who have DNA from three people. The BBC's Science Correspondent Rebecca Morelle explores how more children like Alana could be born. The UK is looking to legalise a new technique which woul...
Sep 01, 2014•27 min
Infectious bacteria are becoming resistant to the drugs that used to kill them. The last new class of antibiotics was discovered in the 1980s. There is little in the development pipelines of the world’s pharmaceutical industry. Drug companies got out of antibiotics as their attention switched to much more lucrative daily medicines for chronic diseases. Public funding on antibiotic research has also withered. Now that the gathering crisis of antibiotic resistance is becoming recognised by politic...
Aug 25, 2014•27 min
The discovery and harnessing of antibiotic drugs in the mid-20th Century led some medics to predict the end of infectious diseases. But the bacteria fought and continue to fight back, evolving resistance to many of the drugs that used to kill them. Public health officials warn that without new drugs, medicine will return to the days where ‘a cut finger on Monday leads to death of Friday’. Without protective antibiotics to keep infections at bay, scores of standard surgical operations and chemoth...
Aug 18, 2014•26 min
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. Image copyright: Steffen Richter, Harvard University
Aug 11, 2014•27 min
On 6th August, the space probe Rosetta ends its 10 year journey and arrives at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. If all goes well, Rosetta will be the first spacecraft to go into orbit around a comet. The European Space Agency probe will then accompany the comet until December 2015, studying the 4 kilometre-wide lump of ice and rock dust at a level of detail far surpassing any previous comet flyby. In the words of Rosetta scientist Joel Parker, “Previous comet missions have been one-night stands,...
Aug 04, 2014•29 min
Professor Sir Michael Rutter has been described as the most illustrious and influential psychiatric scientist of his generation. His international reputation has been achieved despite the fact that as a young doctor, he had no intention of becoming a researcher, nor interest in becoming a child psychiatrist. In fact he became a world leader as both. His career has spanned more than five decades and is marked by a remarkable body of high-impact research and landmark studies. The theme running thr...
Jul 28, 2014•27 min
At the start of 2014 meteorologists warned of a possible El Nino event this year. The portents were persuasive – a warming of the central Pacific much like that which preceded the powerful El Nino event of 1997. But since then the Pacific climate system seems to have stalled. What’s going on? What are the prospects for an El Nino to develop later this year? What impacts might it have? Roland Pease delves below the Pacific surface to find out what drives El Nino cycles, the most powerful single c...
Jul 21, 2014•27 min
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 d...
Jul 14, 2014•27 min
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 t...
Jul 07, 2014•27 min
Janet Hemingway, the youngest woman to ever to become a full professor in the UK, talks about her career at the frontline of the war on malaria. Whilst many researchers look for vaccines and treatments to this global killer, Janet's approach, as a trained entomologist, has been to fight the mosquito - the vector - which transmits the malaria parasite. Image: Janet Hemingway, BBC Copyright
Jun 30, 2014•27 min
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 scientist...
Jun 23, 2014•27 min
Jack Stewart meets the engineers who are building vehicles that drive themselves. He 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 diffi...
Jun 16, 2014•27 min
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 ...
Jun 09, 2014•27 min
ITER is the most complex experiment ever attempted on this planet. Its aim, to demonstrate that nuclear fusion, the power of the Sun, can give us pollution free energy that we can use for millions of years. But at the moment, it's still largely a vast building site in the Haut Provence of southern France, with little prospect of any nuclear reactions there for another decade. A recent management report made damning criticisms of the way ITER is run, of the relations between the central organisat...
Jun 02, 2014•27 min
Dr Tiffany Jenkins asks what our brains can tell us about art. Can there ever be a recipe for beauty? Or are the great works beyond the powers of neuroscience? She talks to Professor Semir Zeki of University College London, the first person to coin the term, neuroaesthetics, about what happens in the brain when people in a scanner see paintings or hear music. Professor Gabi Starr at New York University tells Tiffany Jenkins why she thinks there are parts of the brain that light up when we like a...
May 26, 2014•27 min
Alf Adams FRS, physicist at the University of Surrey, had an idea on a beach in the mid-eighties that made the modern internet, CD and DVD players, and even bar-code readers possible. You probably have half a dozen 'strained-layer quantum well lasers' in your home. Image credit: Alf Adams, BBC Copyright
May 19, 2014•27 min
Mark Miodownik's chronic interest in materials began in rather unhappy circumstances. He was stabbed in the back, with a razor, on his way to school. When he saw the tiny piece of steel that had caused him so much harm, he became obsessed with how it could it be so sharp and so strong. And he's been materials-mad ever since. Working at a nuclear weapons laboratory in the US, he enjoyed huge budgets and the freedom to make the most amazing materials. But he gave that up to work with artists and d...
May 12, 2014•27 min
Forensic anthropologist professor Sue Black began her career with a Saturday job working in a butcher's shop. At the time she didn't realise that this would be the start of a lifelong fascination with anatomy. Her job has taken her to some extreme and challenging locations to identify human bodies, such as Kosovo, where she uncovered evidence used in the UN's War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Back home, Sue has been integral in solving many high-profile criminal cases, including cracking Scotlan...
May 05, 2014•27 min
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 b...
Apr 28, 2014•27 min
Biofuels were hailed as the environmental solution to fossil fuels not that long ago. Made from living crops they take up carbon dioxide as they grow. So burning them shouldn’t disturb the balance of warming gases in the atmosphere. But for the last few years the publicity about biofuels has been mainly negative. And for good reason – biofuels are made from crops such as oil palm - grown in place of food crops or even rainforests. In some cases using these crops actually produces more CO2 than b...
Apr 21, 2014•27 min
An extended interview with the Nobel prize laureate. Peter Higgs tells Jim Al-Khalili that he failed to realise the full significance of the Higgs boson and to link it to the much celebrated Standard Model of Physics. He puts the oversight down to a string of missed opportunities, including one night at a physics summer camp when he chose to go to bed early. Working alone in Edinburgh in the 1960s, Peter Higgs says he was considered "a bit of a crank... No-one wanted to work with me". In 1964, h...
Apr 14, 2014•27 min
Jim al-Khalili talks to psychiatrist Vikram Patel about the global campaign he is leading to tackle mental health. He reflects on his early career working in Zimbabwe, when he doubted any western diagnosis or treatments for peoples' distress would be of much use. However, his subsequent research made him question this and come to the realisation that some conditions, like depression and psychosis, could be tackled universally. Now based in India, Vikram's research guides the public health approa...
Apr 07, 2014•27 min
Fatal shark attacks on humans have been on the increase in Australia. For Discovery, marine biologist Dr Helen Scales finds out how scientists are exploring new, humane ways to reduce this number. At the start of this year, the state government of Western Australia decided to undertake the culling of sharks longer than three metres, after what they called an “unprecedented number of attacks”. In February, thousands of Australians protested against the cull, with conservationists claiming that it...
Mar 31, 2014•27 min
Is free will unique to humans or a biological trait that evolved over time and across species? Whilst the existence and nature of free will has been hotly debated by philosophers through the centuries, the basic idea that we determine our own destiny is fundamental to human experience. We can even decide to act in ways which may threaten our very existence. Biology underpins how we behave but it is the human mind that decides to act. Recently, however, this idea has come under attack from neuros...
Mar 24, 2014•27 min
If you believe the headlines fructose is 'addictive as cocaine', a 'toxic additive' or a 'metabolic danger'. So how has a simple sugar in fruit and honey got such a bad name and is there any evidence behind the accusations that it has caused the obesity epidemic? Meanwhile, a new health claim approved by the European Food Safety Authority for foods or drinks substituting fructose for other sugars, comes into force. Dr Mark Porter talks to leading world experts to sift through the evidence in Fru...
Mar 17, 2014•27 min
Audiologists are concerned there may be a rising tide of 'hidden hearing loss' among young people. As electronic prices have fallen, sound systems have become cheaper and more powerful. At the same time, live music events and personal music players are more popular than ever, resulting in an increase in noise-related hearing damage. Aged 32, science writer Frank Swain is losing his hearing. In this programme, he asks what the future holds for people like him, part of a tech-savvy generation who ...
Mar 10, 2014•27 min
Gardening grandmother Ruth Brooks, also known as 'the snail lady', was chosen as the BBC's Amateur Scientist of the Year in 2010. She noticed that despite repeatedly throwing her snails over the garden fence, her gastropods would return home to decimate her petunias. From her Radio 4 experiments, designed by mentor Dr Dave Hodgson, from the University of Exeter, they showed that snails do have a homing instinct, returning from distances of over 10 metres. In this documentary, Ruth sets out to in...
Mar 03, 2014•27 min
