Digging and excavating are bywords for archaeology. But why does history end up deep under our feet?
This question struck CrowdScience listener Sunil in an underground car park. Archaeological remains found during the car park’s construction were displayed in the subterranean stairwells, getting progressively older the deeper he went. How had these treasures become covered in so much soil over the centuries?
CrowdScience visits Lisbon, the capital of Portugal – and home to the above-mentioned multi-storey car park. The city has evidence of human habitation stretching back into prehistory, with remnants of successive civilisations embedded and jumbled up below today’s street level. Why did it all end up like this?
Human behaviour is one factor, but natural processes are at work too. Over at Butser Ancient Farm, an experimental archaeology site in the UK, we explore the myriad forces of nature that cover up – or expose - ancient buildings and artefacts over time.
Contributors:
Dr Mariana Nabais, University of Lisbon
Carolina Grilo, Lisbon Museum of the Roman Theatre
Dr Matt Pope, University College London
Presented by Marnie Chesterton, Produced by Cathy Edwards for the BBC World Service.
Tree mortality in tropical moist forests in Australia has been increasing since the mid 1980s. The death rate of trees appears to have doubled over that time period. According to an international team of researchers, the primary cause is drier air in these forests, the consequence of human-induced climate change. According to ecologist David Bauman, a similar process is likely underway in tropical forests on other continents.
Also in the programme: the outbreaks of monkeypox in Europe and North America… Could SARS-CoV-2 infection lingering in the gut be a cause of Long Covid? News of a vaccine against Epstein Barr virus, the cause of mononucleosis, various cancers and multiple sclerosis.
Image:
Credit: Getty Images
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker
Hopes of finding eight miners trapped more than 700 metres underground in Burkina Faso are fading after rescuers today found a second safety chamber empty. We hear the frustrations and despair of some of the men's wives.
Also, Nigeria's chief accountant has been arrested in connection with a $190 million dollar fraud case involving money laundering and diversion of funds.
And how South Africa is tackling high youth unemployment.
The heaviest thing in the Galaxy has now been imaged by the biggest telescope on Earth. This is Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy – a gas and star-consuming object, a 4 million times the mass of the Sun. The Event Horizon Telescope is not one device but a consortium of radio telescopes ranging from the South Pole to the Arctic Circle. Their combined data allowed astronomers to focus in on this extreme object for the first time. Astronomer Ziri Younsi from University College London talks to Roland Pease about the orange doughnut image causing all the excitement.
Also in the programme…
Climatologist Chris Funk talks about the role of La Niña and climate change in the record-breaking two year drought that continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in East Africa.
Was a pig virus to blame for the death of the first patient to receive a pig heart transplant? We talk to the surgeon and scientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who led the historic animal to human transplant operation this year.
How easy will it be to grow plants in lunar soil on future moon bases? Plant biologist Anna Lisa Paul has been testing the question in her lab at the University of Florida, Gainesville, with cress seeds and lunar regolith collected by the Apollo missions.
And….
Does photographic memory exist?
Most people are great at remembering key points from important events in their lives, while the finer details - such as the colour of the table cloth in your favourite restaurant or the song playing on the radio while you brushed your teeth - are forgotten.
But some people seem to have the power to remember events, documents or landscapes with almost perfect recall, which is widely referred to as having a photographic memory. CrowdScience listeners Tracy and Michael want to know if photographic memory actually exists and if not, what are the memory processes that allow people to remember certain details so much better than others?
Putting her own memory skills to the test along the way, presenter Marnie Chesterton sets out to investigate just what’s happening inside our brains when we use our memories, the importance of being able to forget and why some people have better memories than others.
Photo: First image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy
Credit: EHT Collaboration, Southern European Observatory
Presenter: Roland Pease and Marnie Chesterton
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker and Hannah Fisher
Most people are great at remembering key points from important events in their lives, while the finer details - such as the colour of the table cloth in your favourite restaurant or the song playing on the radio while you brushed your teeth - are forgotten. But some people seem to have the power to remember events, documents or landscapes with almost perfect recall, which is widely referred to as having a photographic memory.
Crowdscience listeners Tracy and Michael want to know if photographic memory actually exists and if not, what are the memory processes that allow people to remember certain details so much better than others?
Putting her own memory skills to the test along the way, presenter Marnie Chesterton sets out to investigate just what’s happening inside our brains when we use our memories, the importance of being able to forget and why some people have better memories than others.
Produced by Hannah Fisher and presented by Marnie Chesterton for the BBC World Service.
Contributors:
Stephen Wiltshire
Annette Wiltshire
Dr Farahnaz Wick
Professor Craig Stark
The heaviest thing in the Galaxy has now been imaged by the biggest telescope on Earth. This is Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy – a gas and star-consuming object, a 4 million times the mass of the Sun. The Event Horizon Telescope is not one device but a consortium of radio telescopes ranging from the South Pole to the Arctic Circle. Their combined data allowed astronomers to focus in on this extreme object for the first time. Astronomer Ziri Younsi from University College London talks to Roland Pease about the orange doughnut image causing all the excitement.
Also in the programme…
Climatologist Chris Funk talks about the role of La Niña and climate change in the record-breaking two year drought that continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in East Africa.
Was a pig virus to blame for the death of the first patient to receive a pig heart transplant? We talk to the surgeon and scientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who led the historic animal to human transplant operation this year.
How easy will it be to grow plants in lunar soil on future moon bases? Plant biologist Anna Lisa Paul has been testing the question in her lab at the University of Florida, Gainesville, with cress seeds and lunar regolith collected by the Apollo missions.
Photo: First image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy
Credit: EHT Collaboration, Southern European Observatory
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker
The fuel prices emergency is hitting households across the continent, from Egypt to Tanzania, Uganda to Nigeria and South Africa. The airline industry has also been affected. So what can governments do?
Also, in Somalia, dozens of candidates have registered for the presidential race in six days. We hear who's challenging the incumbent, Farmajo.
Plus, how South African singer, Nomfundo Moh, has made it big in the world of music.
The Mekong Delta is home to 17 million people and is Vietnam’s most productive agricultural region. An international group of scientists warn this week that almost all of the low lying delta will have sunk beneath the sea within 80 years without international action. Its disappearance is the result of both sea level rise and developments such as dams and sand mining, as Matt Kondolf of the University of California, Berkeley explains to Roland Pease.
Also in the programme:
Seismologist Laura Emert on using the rumbling of traffic in Mexico City to monitor earthquake hazards.
Mars-shaking Marsquakes – recent record-breaking quakes on Mars explained by seismologist Anna Horleston of Bristol University.
A record-breaking high jumping robot designed by mechanical engineer and roboticist Elliot Hawkes which is so light it can access any terrain, perhaps even the moon.
And gene editing….
Humans now have the ability to directly change their DNA and gene-editing tool CRISPR has led to a new era in gene-editing. CrowdScience listener ‘Bones’ wants to know how gene-editing is currently being used and what might be possible in the future.
Gene-editing offers huge opportunities for the prevention and treatment of human diseases, and trials are currently underway in a wide range of diseases like sickle cell anaemia. CrowdScience presenter Caroline Steel finds out about some of the most promising work tackling disease before turning to consider the possibilities of using gene editing for non-medical changes.
Will we be able to extend human longevity, swap our eye colour or enhance athletic performance? And even if we can do all these things, should we?
As scientists push the boundaries of gene-editing and some people are DIY experimenting on themselves with CRISPR, we discuss the practical and ethical challenges facing this promising but potentially perilous area of science.
Photo: Mekong River in Kampong Cham, Cambodia
Credit: Muaz Jaffar/EyeEm/Getty Images
Presenters: Roland Pease and Caroline Steel
Producers: Andrew Luck-Baker and Melanie Brown
This month, in the next in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, Harriett Gilbert and readers around the world talk to award-winning American writer Bryan Washington about his moving novel Memorial.
Benson, a Black day-care teacher and Mike, a Japanese-American chef, live together in Houston, but are beginning to wonder why they're a couple. When Mike flies off to visit his seriously ill, estranged father in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother arrives for a visit, Benson is stuck looking after his boyfriend’s mother, in a very unconventional domestic set-up. As both men cope with their difficult circumstances they undergo life-changing transformations, learning more about love, anger, and grief than they had bargained for along the way.
Poignant and profound, Memorial is about family in all its strange forms, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the outer limits of love.
(Picture: Bryan Washington. Photo credit: Louis Do.)
Humans now have the ability to directly change their DNA, and gene-editing tool CRISPR has led to a new era in gene-editing. CrowdScience listener ‘Bones’ wants to know how gene-editing is currently being used and what might be possible in the future.
Gene-editing offers huge opportunities for the prevention and treatment of human diseases, and trials are currently underway in a wide range of diseases like sickle cell anaemia. CrowdScience presenter Caroline Steel finds out about some of the most promising work tackling disease before turning to consider the possibilities of using gene editing to enhance ourselves.
Will we be able to extend human longevity, swap our eye colour or improve athletic performance? And even if we can do all these things, should we?
As scientists push the boundaries of gene-editing and some people are DIY experimenting on themselves with CRISPR, we discuss the practical and ethical challenges facing this promising but potentially perilous area of science.
Produced by Melanie Brown and presented by Caroline Steel for the BBC World Service
Contributors:
Prof George Church
Prof Waseem Qasim
Jimi Olaghere
Josiah Zayner
Prof Joyce harper
Prof Julian Suvalescu
