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Raising Allosaurus Sep 02, 2013

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In the 20 years since the release of the film Jurassic Park, DNA cloning technologies have advanced dramatically. Professor Adam Hart asks whether we could and should start bringing extinct animals back from the dead.

The fossilised remains of dinosaurs are too degraded to hold any viable DNA, so Jurassic Park is unlikely to be a reality. But what about Pleistocene Park? Deep frozen remains of Arctic animals like the woolly mammoth or the Irish elk, have been shown to contain DNA - but is it in a good enough condition to rebuild the genome and attempt cloning these animals which became extinct nearly 4000 years ago?

Some people think it could work. But should we even be considering it? With so many plants and animals threatened with extinction now, should we be wasting time and resources on bringing back animals that didn't make the cut?

Adam Hart asks experts in ancient DNA whether the code for life could be resurrected in animals such as the mammoth, the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the marsupial tiger, or the thylacine. And he asks conservationists whether we should be doing it.

CERN and Science in Africa Aug 26, 2013

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Earlier this year the BBC organised a ‘science festival’ in Uganda. One of the practical outcomes of this was to put physics teachers in East Africa in touch with physicists involved in the Higgs boson discovery at CERN. As a result, several teachers from the region visited CERN and took part in their international teacher programmes.

In Discovery this week we look at the impact of their visit and ask how international ‘big science’ projects such as CERN can offer practical development help – especially in sub Saharan Africa.

The Story of SARS, Part Two Aug 19, 2013

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Dr Kevin Fong concludes a two-part special looking back at the extraordinary events which unfolded a decade ago when the disease known as SARS first emerged onto an unsuspecting world.

In a matter of days SARS had travelled around the globe from a hotel room in Hong Kong, and would go on to infect thousands of people, in dozens of countries. But standing between us and the virus were hundreds of healthcare workers who risked their lives to fight against and contain this unknown deadly disease, some of whom paid the ultimate price. Kevin travels to Hong Kong and Toronto to meet the survivors. With concerns rising over H7N9 and MERS, Kevin asks what lessons have we learned since the first SARS outbreak and would those who stepped up to protect us back then, do so again?

The Story of SARS, Part One Aug 12, 2013

Show notes

Dr Kevin Fong begins a two-part special looking back at the extraordinary events which unfolded a decade ago when the disease known as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) first emerged onto an unsuspecting world.

In a matter of days SARS had travelled around the globe from a hotel room in Hong Kong - and would go on to infect thousands of people, in dozens of countries. But standing between us and the virus were hundreds of healthcare workers who risked their lives to fight against and contain this unknown deadly disease, some of whom paid the ultimate price. With concerns rising over H7N9 and MERS, Kevin asks what lessons have we learned since the first SARS outbreak and would those who stepped up to protect us back then, do so again?

(Image: Sign for the accident and emergency unit at the L'Hopital Francais de Hanoi. Credit: BBC copyright)

Crossrail: Tunnelling under London Aug 05, 2013

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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 undergound 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'.

Oxytocin Jul 29, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forecasting Earthquakes Jul 22, 2013

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Earthquakes can't be predicted. But millions of dollars are spent trying to forecast them - warning the public which regions are dangerous, what the chances are of a quake in the next number of years and how strong the shaking might be. But following the failures of the Japanese system to identify the danger on the north-east coast, struck by a giant tsunami in 2011, many experts are saying that the dream of hazard assessment is an illusion. We may never know enough about the mechanisms of the Earth to reliably foresee deadly shaking.

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

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

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

Plate Tectonics and Life Jul 15, 2013

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

Quorum Sensing Jul 08, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

Build Me a Brain Jul 01, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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