Science In Action podcast

#BBC #Science #BBC World Service #Tech #On Covid19

1:03:29

Finally, we find out who is unbeatable, unhateable, and unbreakable in the final five episodes of Battle Camp Season One. Host Chris Burns is joined by the multi-talented comedian Dana Moon to relive the cockroach mac & cheese, Trey’s drag debut, and the final wheel spin. The Season One Winner joins Chris to debrief on strategy and dish on game play. Leave us a voice message at www.speakpipe.com/WeHaveTheReceipts Text us at (929) 487-3621 DM Chris @FatCarrieBradshaw on Instagram Follow We Have The Receipts wherever you listen, so you never miss an episode. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts.…

Science In Action

Series home•Feed

The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

419 episodes

Science In Action

7,628 subscribers

updated 4 days ago

Series home•Feed

The BBC brings you all the week's science news.

419 episodes

#BBC #Science #BBC World Service #Tech #On Covid19

Wszystkie odcinki

Science In Action

1
Gain-of-Function: Loss-of-Funding 26:30

4 days ago26:30

26:30

This week, the White House posted an executive order which details the administration’s intent to stop ‘dangerous gain-of-function research’. We talk to Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and biosecurity expert at Johns Hopkins University who fears the timing and added bureaucracy could stop all sorts of important biosciences unnecessarily, and that the order is somewhat ideologically driven. Also, Nasa’s Juno mission has provided data on the most powerful volcanic event ever recorded, which took place on the planet Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Hellish Io, squeezed as it is by the immense gravity of Jupiter, has not been observed from its poles before in this manner. Last week at EGU25, Science in Action got to speak with the mission’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute. Still on Jupiter’s moons, we also ask whether there could there be life on Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa? Scientists believe their glaciated oceans may harbour conditions suitable for life. Also at the EGU meeting were Jonathan Lunine, chief scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and Athena Coustenis, director of research at the Paris Observatory in Meudon. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield with Tabby Taylor-Buck Production co-ordinator: Josie Hardy (Photo: Clinical support technician extracts viruses from swab samples. Credit: Jane Barlow/Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
Scientists of the world unite 29:25

11 days ago29:25

29:25

Scientists from around the world have gathered together at the annual European Geosciences Union general assembly, to discuss current projects, working hypotheses and potential findings. There are nearly 18,000 in attendance this year and there is much to learn. AMOC – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - brings warmth to the north and cooler waters to the south in huge volumes. Climate modellers have expressed concern for its collapse (and subsequent weather chaos) as temperatures rise more generally, but others have said it is more resilient. But Stefan Rhamstorf has announced that extending the models past 2100 can show a different picture. The odds have shifted from 10% to more like 50/50 if the Paris climate target is missed. Has such climate change ever occurred before? And if so, what drove it? Hana Jurikova and colleagues have been using novel techniques to detect a link between atmospheric CO2 levels and rapid climate change in the geological past, and explains how boron records in ancient brachiopods might give us a clue. What of the 6.2 magnitude earthquake near Istanbul last week? Could it have been worse? Will the next one be the big one? Expert Patricia Martínez-Garzón of GFZ in Germany doesn’t quite allay the fears. Could more lives be saved from landslides and flash floods if we could set up a warning system? Stefania Ursica hopes so, and has looked to animal behaviour to design a programme to scan networks of seismic monitoring stations’ output for the faint signals. Encoding different hunting and communication strategies – from nomadic whales to humming birds and bats, her new algorithm might be just the thing, though prediction will always be a different problem. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield with Sophie Ormiston Production co-ordinator: Josie Hardy (Image: 3D render of a Topographic Map of Western Europe with the clouds from 27 January, 2025. Credit: Frank Ramspott/Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
Wet market SARS CoV-2 origins revisited 35:17

18 days ago35:17

35:17

Last week, the website covid.gov looked very different, containing information on coping with covid and US research. This week it leads you to a White House webpage outlining the lab-leak hypothesis – that the pandemic was the result of dodgy lab work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The scientific consensus however continues to suggest a zoonotic crossover event. And a preprint recently published by Zach Hensel of ITQB NOVA (NOVA University Lisbon) and Florence Débarre of the Sorbonne, adds new early sequences to the evidence base. As they suggest, it doesn’t seal the debate, but it certainly doesn’t surprise the scientists. As the Trump administration continues to rattle swords with US science, we speak with Lisa Fazio of Vanderbuilt University who found out abruptly her funding from the National Science Foundation is ending, and Don Ingber, founding director of Harvard University’s Wyss Institute about the impacts they are feeling from the federal belt tightening. Finally we learn this week of an eerie species of Hawai’ian caterpillar moth. Not only is it carnivorous, but it ties small pieces of the indigestible remains of insects and bugs found in spider webs to its case, like a gruesome, camouflaged suit of armour. Why? As Dan Rubinoff of Hawai’i describes, it protects it from the hungry host spider, making it appear as the leftovers of yesterday’s dinner, or perhaps the shed exoskeleton of the spider itself. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Josie Hardy (Image: The view of Huanan seafood market on February 9, 2021 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Credit: Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
Any more for Moore’s Law? 29:07

25 days ago29:07

29:07

After 60 years of doubling computer complexity every two years, can Moore’s law still predict the future power of the devices we use? In 1965, electronics pioneer Gordon Moore was asked to predict the next ten years of progress with the then new-fangled silicon integrated circuits. He estimated, based on physics and manufacturing technologies then available what seemed remarkable: that every two years they would double in complexity, and halve in price, until 1975. 60 years on, perhaps the even more remarkable thing is that they just kept doubling. Can Moore’s law hold into future decades? What are the next technological innovations that might keep it running? Sri Samavedam is the vice president for silicon technologies at imec in Belgium, whose job it is to think about the practicalities of manufacturing the next generations of chips years before they become real. Scott Aaronsen of the University of Texas is a thinker in the field of Quantum Computing – could quantum computing keep the rate of growth going? Or does it need to be thought of differently? One of the limitations on chip miniaturisation is the dissipation of heat from conventional electronic flow. Nick Harris of Lightmatter is looking at using photons rather than electrons to carry info and logic around a circuit with lower power losses. Stan Williams has spent much of his career thinking about new devices that could be fabricated into integrated circuits to give it all a push forward. And he tells Roland how the memristor could effectively bring the power of analogue computing to bear as we reach some of the limits of the digital age we have been living in. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield and Gareth Nelson-Davies…

Science In Action

1
Researching pain, painlessly 43:03

5 weeks ago43:03

43:03

Pain, particularly chronic pain, is hard to research. New therapeutics are hard to screen for. Patients are not all the same. Sergui Pascu and colleagues at Stanford university have been growing brain samples from stem cells. Then they began connecting different samples, specialised to represent different brain regions. This week they announce their most complex “assembloid” yet, one that even reacts to hot chilli, passing a signal from the sensory neurons through to the thinking bits. The hope is that it can provide insights on how pain, and potential painkillers, work. Human brains are notoriously large, particularly infants. Whilst for primates the human pelvis is quite narrow, to allow us to walk and run on two legs. This notoriously makes childbirth, well, not as straightforward as most other species. This evolutionary “obstetric dilemma” has been debated for decades. Marianne Brasil, of Western Washington University, and colleagues, have published this week a huge study of contemporary human genes and anatomies available from the UK Biobank to shed some more light on this ongoing compromise. Malta is an island in the Mediterranean no less than 80km from land. So how come Eleanor Scerri and colleagues have discovered archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherers living there from 8,500 years ago? And they didn’t just visit and leave. They stayed for perhaps a millennium before farming arrived. Maybe a rethink of what nautical capabilities our ancestors had in the deep past is needed? A year ago, Science in Action gate-crashed a conference looking at plans for meeting the forthcoming arrival of asteroid Apophis in 2029. This year the meeting is in Tokyo, and Richard Binzel, emeritus professor of Astronomy at MIT, gives us an update on how the space agencies are hoping to collaborate to maximise the scientific value from what will be a global, visible, phenomenon in just 4 years. Is there enough time to get our collective wits together? (Image: 3D illustration of Interconnected neurons with electrical pulses. Credit: Getty Images) Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Josie Hardy…

Science In Action

1
Earthquakes and the first breath of life on Earth 31:37

6 weeks ago31:37

31:37

How Myanmar’s tragic earthquake left a 500km scar on the surface of the earth in just 90 seconds. Also, more hints of a link between shingles vaccines and reduced dementia, and how earth’s first oxygen breathers seem to have evolved way before there was enough oxygen to breath. Judith Hubbard is a seismologist and earthquake analyst who has been gleaning what scientific information we can find on the tragic quake that struck Myanmar last week. There seems to be some sort of link between the herpes virus that causes shingles and some people’s risk of Alzheimer’s dementia. At least, the latest paper appears to confirm so, according to an analysis published in Nature this week. Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University and colleagues have looked at data from public health records in NHS Wales in the UK, and have retrospectively performed a “natural experiment”, finding a clear suggestion that a vaccine against the virus that causes shingles seems to confer a lower likelihood of developing dementia over the subsequent seven years. Quite why this happens remains moot. And a long time ago, and for a long time, life on earth was nought but bacteria. The atmosphere was also nearly devoid of oxygen. These ancient bacteria leave scant fossil records, whilst the rocks show a clear time – known as the Great Oxidation Event – when earth’s atmosphere transformed to something more like the oxygen rich air we breath now. A pervading chicken-and-egg question asks whether the atmosphere changed and life adapted, or did life somehow evolve and transform the atmosphere? A team publishing in Science this week have performed an innovative analysis of bacterial genomes that suggests that the ability to use oxygen in respiration evolved some 900 million years before the atmosphere transformed. The question still stands, but as the team explain, the new analysis provides at least a clear timeline for why we breath the way we do today. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Josie Hardy (Image: People ride a scooter past the rubble of damaged Buddhist pagoda in Mandalay on April 3, 2025. Credit: Sai Aung MAIN / AFP via Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
Breakthrough antivirals and fresh US grant cancellations 28:35

7 weeks ago28:35

28:35

This week, after five years of research, two newly discovered antiviral molecules have been shown to combat coronaviruses. Johan Neyts of the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Leuven outlines how he hopes the new molecule developed by his team might help us deal with emerging pandemics in the future. But as the US halts all Covid related research, will drugs like these ever hit the shelves? Among the grants terminated this week by the National Institute for Health is a programme called AViDD, AntiViral Drug Discovery, supporting 9 independent consortia. Annette von Delft of Oxford University and Ed Griffen of the drugs discovery company MedChemica spoke to us about the overnight shut down of years of work and importance of antiviral development. The longest ever carbon-based molecules have been discovered by the Mars Curiosity rover. Caroline Freissinet of the Laboratoire Atmosphères et Observations Spatiales talked us through the meticulous planning and geological chance that made this possible, and whether these long chain alkanes could be a clue to discovering life on mars. Researchers at Vanderbilt University have been delving into the genetic evolution of horses to discover the mutation that’s behind their runaway metabolic success. Gianni Castiglione explains how a mutation that should have been catastrophic instead helped horses to evolve from the size of dogs to the giant athletic animals we know today. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Emily Bird Production Coordinators: Jana Bennett-Holesworth and Josie Hardy (Photo: Two tablets of Roche Pharmaceuticals' Tamiflu. Photo by Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto via Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
Columbia cuts and "transgender mice" 28:42

8 weeks ago28:42

28:42

There is continued upheaval in US scientific institutions under the new Trump administration. This week $400 million dollars-worth of grants have been frozen at Columbia University in response to “illegal” protests on the campus. President Trump also recently accused the Biden Administration of spending $8 million dollars on "transgender mice" experiments. We talk to two scientists, Kelton Minor and Patricia Silveyra, who have been affected in different ways. Also, as the first data from the European Space Agency's Euclid mission is released, Euclid project leader Valeria Pettorino tells us how this impressive space telescope hopes to unlock the secrets of the dark universe. And, around this time last year we heard about the H5N1 strain of bird flu finally jumping to the Antarctica Peninsula. Today, an expedition led by virologist Antonio Alcami confirms that the virus has spread to every animal species at each site they visited. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Ella Hubber Production co-ordinator: Jana Holesworth and Josie Hardy (Photo: University of Minnesota researchers, scientists and other supporters protest against President Donald Trump's proposed scientific research funding cuts. Credit: Michael Siluk/Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
New warnings, familiar faces, and radio pulses 44:56

9 weeks ago44:56

44:56

Five years after the WHO pandemic announcement, an H5N1 call to arms from global health leaders. Also, the oldest western European face is found, the oldest impact crater possibly identified, and strange radio signals from space maybe explained. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: US To Boost Egg Imports As Prices Soar On Bird Flu. Credit: Bloomberg via Getty).…

Science In Action

1
An uncertain forecast for meteorology 44:19

10 weeks ago44:19

44:19

As the new administration in the US continues to make cuts to government agencies and scientific funding, NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been particularly trimmed. This week the professional organisation for weather forecasters – the American Meteorological Society has published a statement pleading for clemency, arguing that the whole US Weather Enterprise is at risk. It’s current president elect, veteran weather broadcaster Alan Sealls describes how it’s not just US weather forecasts that appear bleak. As the journal Science Advances publishes a special edition highlighting areas of women’s health research, we speak with two researchers who may have found a link between menopause – or perhaps hormonal changes – and the age it occurs, with Altzeimer’s Disease. Madeline Wood or the University of Toronto and Kaitlin Casaletto of UCSF describe how synaptic health – the fitness of the brain - at death seems even to be less attenuated in women who used hormonal therapy during their menopause. It is not however, yet suggested they are causally connected. But we do connect research vessel Polarstern to have an update from Autun Purser and Nottingham University’s molecular biologist Liz Chakrabarti on their nearly completed voyage to the Weddel Sea, in the challengingly chilly Antarctic. They are gathering data and surveying the fauna on the sea floor below what is mostly covered in 3-4 meters of ice. The Icefish they see there are some of the only vertebrates not to have haemoglobin – nor even red blood cells – in their blood. So how, we wonder, do they actually move oxygen around their bodies? Maybe when the team publish their findings – which they are racing to do - we’ll find out. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: National Hurricane Center Monitors Hurricane Beryl's Activity In The Caribbean. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
Asteroid 2024 YR4 crisis averted? 36:30

11 weeks ago36:30

36:30

Just two weeks ago the world learned of an asteroid that had an almost 3% chance of striking earth in less than a decade. Astronomers kept looking, and a team including Olivier Hainaut at ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Palanar, in Chile, have managed to narrow down the uncertainty such that we now know it will definitely not hit the earth. The secret of making such observations after most telescopes could no longer see it was down to the exceptionally dark skies there. But these may be under threat. A plan has been made to build a large power plant, including sustainable hydrogen production around 11km away from the otherwise isolated site, and astronomers around the world are rallying to call for the plant to be built further away so that its construction will not spoil the otherwise unique observation conditions. One of the signatories of a petition to that effect is Julia Siedel, also of ESO, who just last week published the first 3D atmospheric analysis of an exoplanet’s climate. As she explains, future similar observations using the forthcoming, co-sited Extremely Large Telescope could be thwarted before the telescope is even finished. Back on earth, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC) continues to bring warmer air and nutrients north towards the Arctic, and colder, denser water south in the global ocean overturn. But are reports of its collapse under climate change justified? A new paper this week suggests that for the next century at least it is stable though it might slow down. Jonathan Baker of the UK Met office explains how the winds in the south mean the cycle will keep turning, though it may slow down. Talking of the Arctic, Yoel Fink of MIT has dressed a couple of royal marines in wearable computer fibres for their current icy patrol in the north of Canada. Far from going commando, their underwear is measuring temperature and calorific burn to help them avoid frostbite and the dangers of the extreme environment. Yoel’s paper this week describes the new device and the principle that in the future much of all of our healthcare will be provided by these sorts of wearable, stretchy, computing textiles monitoring our activities. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth and Josie Hardy (Photo: Celestial conjunction at Paranal. Credit: Y.Beletsky/ESO)…

Science In Action

1
Who runs science? 36:28

12 weeks ago36:28

36:28

The Lancet this week features a paper calling for a financially sustainable network of influenza labs and experts across Europe. Marion Koopmans was one of the 32 expert signatures, and she describes how Europe needs to learn some lessons from the model developed previously in the US. The ongoing worries around avian H5N1 would be a great example of why funding for that sort of frontline strategic science needs not to be reliant on ad-hoc, potentially political, funding grants. This weekend, a conference is taking place in Asilomar, CA, to mark 50 years since the 1975 conference there at which scientists developed some rules and guidelines around the future practice of genetic science. The historic Asilomar conference is celebrated by many as the moment scientists first demonstrated that they could spot risks, and self-regulate their activities, around novel and disruptive technologies. Author and scientist Matthew Cobb of the University of Manchester, and Shobita Parthasarathy of the University of Michigan discuss how perhaps other perspectives on the Asilomar legacy should be considered. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Herbert Boyer (UCSF) and Paul Berg (Stanford) at a conference at Asilomar, February 26, 1975. Credit: Peter Breining/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)…

Science In Action

1
Hits from space 36:47

13 weeks ago36:47

36:47

This week the recently spotted asteroid 2024 YR4 had its odds of missing us “spectacularly” slashed by 1 percentage point. Still nothing to worry about maintains Patrick Michel of the International Asteroid Warning Network, and he expects that with better tracking data in the next few months (even courtesy of the JWST) that tiny chance of collision will fall further. However, as he explains, it’s very comforting to know that we now have such a sophisticated tracking network, and even better, thanks to NASA’s DART mission, even a demonstrable method for doing something about it if the numbers go the other way… But other extraterrestrial bombardments are harder to detect at all. This week scientists of the KM3NeT collaboration report in the journal Nature their detection of the most energetic neutrino ever noticed. Almost countless numbers travel through the earth – and us – every second, but this little beauty arrived from deep space, plummeting through hundreds of miles of rock and sea (via Malta) to collide with a single molecule of water in the Mediterranean sea. As Paschal Coyle of Aix Marseille University happens to run a cubic kilometre of neutrino observatory in that area explains their huge instrument was barely begun when the record breaker smashed through the area in February 2023. Finally, years of breeding rice cultivars for higher yield may have subtly changed the plants relationship with the microbes in the paddies in which they grow, inadvertently boosting the amount of methane released into our atmosphere. New research, including 3 years of field trials in China have produced a new cultivar, breeding in some of the older stocks, with just as high yields yet up to 70 percent lower methane released. This could make a serious difference to global methane emissions, as Microbiologist Anna Schnürer of Uppsala BioCenter in Sweden describes. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Josie Hardy (Photo: Asteroid 2024 YR4 as observed by the Magdalena Ridge 2.4m telescope Credit: AFP/NASA/New Mexico Institute of Technology)…

Science In Action

1
Earthquakes swarms and whale chart toppers 32:35

14 weeks ago32:35

32:35

The mystery swarm of small earthquakes near the island of Santorini beg for more data collection. Also, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US goes offline and whales learn song like kids learn language. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Josie Hardy (Photo: Greece earthquake. Credit: AFP)…

Science In Action

1
Make science great again 40:41

15 weeks ago40:41