Discovery

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Trauma: The Fight for Life Oct 27, 2014

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Dr Kevin Fong explores the development of modern trauma medicine and discovers how the lessons from conflict and catastrophe have equipped us to deal with even the worst disasters, providing a system that could save lives that would otherwise have been lost. First of two programmes.

Brian Cox Oct 20, 2014

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Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University describes how he gave up appearing on Top of the Pops to study quarks, quasars and quantum mechanics.

Although he describes himself as a simple-minded Northern bloke, he has acquired an almost God-like status on our TV screens, while the ‘Cox effect’ is thought to explain the significant boost to university admissions to read physics. He talks to Jim al-Khalili about learning to be famous, his passion for physics and how he sometimes has difficulty crossing the road.

In 2005 Brian was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship for his work on high energy particle collisions at CERN and elsewhere – an enviable academic achievement. In 2009, he was voted one of the sexiest men alive by People magazine. He has invented a new kind of celebrity – a scientist who is regularly snapped by the paparazzi.

Brian wants everyone to be as excited as he is about the laws that govern our universe - the beautiful, counter-intuitive and often weird world of quantum mechanics that explains what happens inside the nucleus of every atom, right down at the level of those exotically named elementary particles – quarks, neutrinos, gluons, muons.

Challenged by Jim to explain the rules of quantum mechanics in just a minute, Brian succeeds; while conceding that the idea that everything is inherently probabilistic, is challenging. Even Einstein found it difficult. Schrodinger’s cat, or Brian Cox, for that matter, are simultaneously both dead and alive. That’s a fact. What this is all means is another question. “Am I just an algorithm?” Brian asks. “Probably”, says Jim.

Producer: Anna Buckley

(Photo: Brian Cox, BBC copyright)

Urine Trouble: What’s in our Water Oct 13, 2014

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You have a headache and take a pill. The headache is gone, but what about the pill? What we flush away makes its way through sewers, treatment works, rivers and streams and finally back to your tap. Along the way most of the drugs we take are removed but the tiny amounts that remain are having effects. Feminised fish in our rivers, starlings feeding on Prozac-rich worms, and bacteria developing antibiotic resistance - scientists are just beginning to understand how the drugs we take are leaving their mark on the environment.

The compounds we excrete are also telling tales on us. Professor of Chemistry, Andrea Sella, gets up close and personal with music festival toilets to find out what the revellers are swallowing, and hears from scientists who are sampling our rivers to learn about our health.

Producer: Lorna Stewart

(Photo: Laboratory technician, testing a urine sample for traces of any banned substances or stimulants. BBC copyright)

Patients Doing It for Themselves Oct 06, 2014

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Patient power is on the rise. But is it rising too far? Frustrated by the time it takes to develop new drugs, the ethical barriers to obtaining clinical data or the indifference of the medical profession to obscure diseases, patients are setting up their own clinical trials and overturning the norms of clinical research.

A DIY clinical trial sounds like a joke – and a dangerous one at that. But as Vivienne Parry discovers, it's real and on the rise as greater access to medical data allows more patients to play research scientists and medics at their own game.

Patients lie at the very heart of clinical research – without them there is none. Yet they come way down the food chain when it comes to transparency about their own health, blinded as they usually are to what pills they are taking and whether they are actually doing them any good. Even after the trial is published they are left with little understanding of whether the treatment could work for them and licensing is usually years away. So it is perhaps hardly surprising that patient networks have sprung up to redress the balance. Much of this current patient led research now takes place through online communities, with activists and the articulate ill demanding more say in their treament.

Vivienne Parry looks at some examples of patient led research which have challenged the medical establishment. She also asks how far can this go: should patients be prevented from experimenting with proceedures or drugs that might kill them?

(Photo: Medicinal pills)

Preventing Disease in Animals Sep 29, 2014

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Diseases devastate livestock around the world. In chickens for example the deadly strain of bird flu and the lesser known bacterial infection Campylobacter, not only harms the chickens but is also a real threat to human health.

Melissa Hogenboom visits one of the world’s leading genetics institutions, the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh in the UK and hears about new genetic techniques to combat diseases in our livestock. In chickens, professor Helen Sang uses a subtle form of genetic modification, called genome editing. Her team is trying to find the genetic components of natural resistance in a wide group of chicken breeds, which they can then insert into the genome of livestock fowl in the hope of breeding healthier, safer chickens. They are close to making disease resistant birds but they are aware that GM animals are still a long way from entering the market in Europe.

Similar research is going on in cows for TB resistance, but here instead of genetically modifying they are cross-breeding which may take ten or more generations to complete. Melissa hears from Professor Liz Glass who studies the genetics of disease resistance in cattle. Her work has applications in the design of better vaccines for infectious diseases and understanding how disease spreads.

Melissa also hears about a team creating a frozen bio-bank of bird stem cells - cryopreserving them so that they could one day resurrect entire breeds. This technique could provide hope against losing these valuable genes forever.

Producer and presenter: Melissa Hogenboom

(Photo: Chickens. BBC copyright)

Beyond the Abyss Sep 22, 2014

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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 extreme, the water pressure rises to 1 tonne per square centimetre and the temperature drops to 1 degree C. Despite the challenging conditions, some animals survive and thrive in the trenches. Because the technical challenges to operating there are so high, we are only now just learning what is down there and how creatures adapt to life in the extremes.

Based at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, deep sea ecologist Alan Jamieson is one of the premier explorers of life in the Hadal zone. In the programme, he talks through some of the latest video footage he has from the depths of the Kermadec Trench in New Zealand - not by visiting in person but by dropping cameras on a deep sea probe called a hadal lander to the distant sea floor. The images were gathered on an expedition in April and May. They revealed new habits of hadal creatures.

Rebecca does talk to two people who have ventured in person to the far limit of the Hadal zone: US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh who went down to the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench in 1960, and Hollywood director James Cameron who, 52 years later, repeated Walsh's voyage to 11,000 metres.

(Photo: Supergiant amphipod at 6200 metres. Credit: Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen)

Power Transmission Sep 15, 2014

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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?

Biosafety Sep 08, 2014

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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 vials of smallpox from the 1950s being found in the back of a fridge have increased calls for a review of the work being done on some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens.

Andrew Luck-Baker looks at the impact of these recent biosafety lapses for BBC WS Discovery. Some scientists are now arguing for the reduction of laboratories working with deadly viruses and the closing down of research which is potentially risky. But does the benefit of the work outweigh its potential risks to the public? And how can human error be eliminated?

(Photo: Bio hazard warning symbol. Credit: Getty Images)

Mum and Dad and Mum Sep 01, 2014

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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 would mean more children with DNA from three people could be born. This irreversibly changes the human genetic code, and would also eliminate debilitating genetic diseases.

This programme examines the safety and health implications of this new science.

For some it is controversial. For those who have these specific genetic diseases, it is the way to have their own healthy child. The UK is playing a pioneering role in developing the technique, called mitochondrial replacement, and Parliament are expected to vote on legalising it soon. If that happened, the UK would be the first place in the world to make the process legal.

But despite that, there are a small number of children in the world, like Alana Saarinen, who have DNA from three people already. Although a small sample, they could answer some of the questions people have, such as will they be healthy, do they feel like they have three parents and would they like to trace the donor one day in the future?

Producer: Charlotte Pritchard.

Antibiotic Resistance Crisis - Part Two Aug 25, 2014

Show notes

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 politicians, what are the options? Roland Pease explores how business, academia and governments might work together to avert a return to the medical dark ages.

Image Credit: Hospital scientist inspects an unidentified culture in the Microbiology Department of Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital, Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images

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