CrowdScience - Why am I always late?

CrowdScience listener Sid is running late, and he’s turning to science to find an excuse. He and his partner Steffi in Singapore have very different attitudes to timekeeping. They wonder if this is down to their different cultural upbringings, or if they just had very different brains to start with.

Presenter Chhavi Sachdev puts her own time perception skills to the test to try to understand how subjective our sense of time can be. And we discover how the language we grow up speaking can influence the way we think about punctuality.

Presenter: Chhavi Sachdev Producer: Emily Bird Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Jackie Margerum

Focus on Africa - Humanitarians working in Sudan speak

Sudan is facing the largest humanitarian crisis globally. As the country’s civil war enters its third year, the United Nations and Non-Governmental organisations say it civilians are continuing to pay the price, due to inaction. Humanitarians, some in the country, share their experiences.

Also, what is the International Parliamentary group known as IPAC, and is China pressurising foreign politicians in Africa to withdraw from it?

And, is there freedom of worship for Christians in a majority muslim Somalia? Find out from a Christian leader.

Presenter: Audrey Brown Technical Producer: Francesca Dunne Producers: Bella Hassan and Amie Liebowitz Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi

Unexpected Elements - An eggciting episode

This week is the Christian celebration of Easter, which sent the Unexpected Elements team scrambling for egg-related stories.

First up, we find out about the rise of a vegan egg substitute.

Next, we discover how to cook the perfect boiled egg, according to science.

We then turn our attention to climate change, and find out how it is affecting the breeding patterns and nesting behaviour of sea turtles.

Plus, we are joined by Dr Luis Welbanks, who tells us about a nearby exoplanet that reeks of rotten eggs.

Finally, we delve into the science behind IVF.

All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements. Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Chhavi Sachdev and Sandy Ong Producer: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, with Debbie Kilbride, Robbie Wojciechowski and William Hornbrook

Science In Action - Any more for Moore’s Law?

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