Nasa scientists have observed that the Earth’s energy imbalance has doubled in just 15 years. As greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations have risen, so too has the difference between the total amount of energy being absorbed from the sun, and the total amount being reradiated back into space. Meanwhile, as we all heat up, scientists at the LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory have managed to do something very cool with their mirrors. Such is the precision with which the detectors have been engineered, they have managed to effectively reduce the temperature of one of the big 10kg reflectors to such an extent that it betrays its quantum state, as if it were simply one big subatomic particle. So what? Roland Pease finds out.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Alex Mansfield
(Photo: Giant sun in the horizon. Credit: Getty Images)
They say life is sweet. Well that’s certainly the case for CrowdScience listener Trevor in Poland who wonders why he can’t stop reaching for the cookie jar. He grew up drinking fruit juice with added sugar but wonders whether his genes could be as important as his environment when it comes to his sweet tooth, especially since his wife seem to be satisfied with mainly savoury snacks. The World Health Organisation says added sugar should constitute a maximum of 5% of our daily energy intake because it can contribute to diabetes, heart disease and obesity. But that’s tricky when you consider it’s now in everything from salad dressings, to savoury sauces.
Manufacturers have been promoting sugar alternatives for decades but recreating the unique taste and feel of it in the mouth are a challenge. Marnie Chesterton gets to try a brand new innovation – a so-called ‘rare’ sugar that has 70 percent of the sweetness but almost none of the calories. In nature, allulose is found in figs, but one producer has discovered a way to make it in the lab. Does it taste as good as it claims? Whilst switching to alternative sugars and sweeteners may reduce the calories, some researchers claim that tasting sweetness, wherever it comes from, can disrupt the body’s mechanism for regulating blood-sugar levels, increasing the risk for conditions like diabetes.
Presented by Marnie Chesterton and produced by Marijke Peters for the BBC World Service
Dr. Clare Jolly and colleagues have been looking at how the first of the major covid variants – alpha - evolved to be more transmissible. Whilst a lot of attention has been on the spike binding areas of the virus and the effectiveness of antibodies from either vaccine or prior infection, their preprint paper this week reports how the virus evolved an ability to inhibit our bodies innate virus response once it has infected a cell.
Prof Dan Shugar and colleagues have been studying the conditions that led to the tragic rock and ice avalanche in February in Chamoli, Uttarakhand. 27 million cubic meters of rock and ice broke off the steep mountainside and plummeted almost 2km down into the valleys below. Using satellite, seismic and video data the scientists have investigated the sequence of events that led to the tragic deaths of 204 people in the floods that followed.
It was a thankfully rare combination of geography and geology and events, but highlights the care that should be taken when building the growing number of hydroelectric plants in high mountainous areas.
But avalanches don’t just happen in mountains. A year before, in a canyon under the sea near the outflow of the Congo river, a sediment avalanche rumbled on for almost two days along some 1,100km of the ocean floor. And as Prof Pete Talling describes, whilst it didn’t trigger a tsunami, it did sever cables supplying internet connectivity between South Africa and Nigeria.
And the BBC’s Samara Linton reports on research into a type of DNA you perhaps haven’t heard of – Z-DNA. It winds the other way to what we consider normal DNA, and scientists are finally beginning to understand its role in many human diseases, including cancer, with some future promise of novel therapeutics.
Presented by Roland Pease
Produced by Alex Mansfield
Serious Men tells the intertwined stories of wily Ayyan Mani - who tries to pass off his son as a mathematical genius - and life at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai, where Ayyan works, and where veteran scientists battle over their pet theories about how life began on Earth.
Serious Men won the Hindu Best Fiction Award in 2010 and the 2011 PEN Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. It’s an unsettling comedy about inequalities in Indian society; it’s a portrait of a man doing his best for his family with unorthodox methods and unexpected results, and it’s a look at the romance and frustrations of scientific research.
Manu Joseph is a novelist and columnist.
(Picture: Manu Joseph. Photo credit: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images.)
It's a topic that's taboo in many cultures, yet it's also something nearly every woman experiences – on average upwards of 400 times throughout her life: menstruation.
Responding to a flood of questions from our CrowdScience listeners, Marnie Chesterton seeks to unpack how periods affect women physically, mentally and societally.
Why did humans evolve to have periods when fewer than two percent of mammals share our experience of menstrual cycles? Is it really a good use of our limited energy reserves? What can the little Egyptian spiny mouse teach us about PMS symptoms? We hear why periods may reduce the number of faulty embryos that implant and how more menstrual cycles may even increase our chances of developing certain types of cancer.
Finally, as the number of periods a woman has over the course of her life has more than quadrupled since the pre-industrial era, Marnie asks: Do we really still need to have them?
Contributors:
Dr Nadia Bellofiore, Hudson Institute of Medical Research at Monash University
Dr Deena Emera, Buck Institute
Lameck Kiula, Jambo for Development
Sally King, Menstrual Matters & King's College London
Dr Diana Mansour, New Croft Centre & Newcastle University
Presented by Marnie Chesterton
Produced by Sam Baker and Melanie Brown for the BBC World Service
Researchers map where the riskiest areas are for viruses to jump from bats into humans. Also, synthetic bacteria with unnatural DNA, and the origin of the humble watermelon.
David Hayman of Massey University in NZ and colleagues have published in the journal Nature Food a study highlighting areas of the world where zoonotic transmission of coronaviruses are most likely to occur between humans and bats of the type most suspected of being the origin of the current SARS CoV2 virus. There are a lot of hotspots combining fragmented forest, livestock farming, human habitation, and populations of horseshoe bats. It is, as he says, just part of the evidence suggesting a natural origin in the areas of northern south-east Asia and southern China.
Jason Chin, Wes Robertson and team at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology have been tinkering with their work on synthetic organisms. By rewriting the dictionary of DNA itself, their new molecular alphabet is able to encode far more elaborate and innovative functions than even nature has ever produced. Publishing this week in the journal Science, their latest bacterium is even capable of being completely immune to viral infection. But as they describe, this could be just the start of what the new technology could deliver in terms of new materials and medicines.
Meanwhile, Susanne Renner has been tracking down some of human beings’ earliest genetic engineering. The selection and breeding of various fruits to produce sweet, sweet watermelon was long suspected to have originated in Africa, the question was where and when? Using a combination of genetic sequencing, ancient Egyptian art, and early modern paintings, she describes to Roland how what we now know as Sudan likely played a part in the story.
(Image: Horseshoe bat Credit: Getty Images)
Presented by Roland Pease
Produced by Alex Mansfield
The latest Nyiragongo eruption was not entirely unexpected, the volcano’s lava lake inside the crater had been building up for years. Local volcanologists say it was only a matter of time before an eruption occurred. The big concern was where the flank of the volcano would be breached as the city of Goma rests under the volcano and there are potential fissures even within the town.
However there are still questions over the effectiveness of seismic monitoring in the area, North Kivu. The Goma observatory has been unable to carry out this work due to a lack of funding. And monitoring is further complicated by the region’s long running civil war, with rebel groups often camped around the volcano.
We hear from Dario Tadesco and Cindy Ebinger. Who have both been monitoring developments.
Cyclone Yass was the second Cyclone to hit India within a week. Are these events becoming more common and are they related to rises in global temperatures? Climatologist Roxy Koll has been monitoring the situation.
Greenland’s pristine glaciers might not be so pristine. Jemma Wadham from Bristol university and her team have found unexpectedly high levels of Mercury in meltwaters - similar to those from industrial pollution. They say research now needs to focus on the impact for wildlife and people in the Arctic region.
And the elusive Sowerby’s beaked Whale doesn’t travel very much despite pockets of the species being found across the Atlantic. Kerri Smith has been researching this species, which is rarely seen alive. Using samples from whales beached or caught accidentally she was able to build up a picture of their distribution.
As millions more of us move to live in densely populated cities, we almost inevitably face living in closer proximity to our neighbours. Neighbour noise can certainly be a source of annoyance – but could it even be damaging to our health?
Increasing evidence suggests that unwanted noise can cause sleep deprivation, distraction and annoyance, as presenter Anand Jagatia finds out. He discovers that noise annoyance has a small but significant impact on our wider health – including our cardiovascular system – but that annoyance is not necessarily down to sound alone. Factors such as perception of the neighbourhood and relationships with our neighbours also play a part.
CrowdScience has examined living with unwanted noises before, and we revisit our trip to the acoustics lab at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK. Here, we meet the researchers and engineers investigating the best ways to make our homes more pleasant for our ears whilst still maintaining the ‘buzz’ of city life.
As millions more of us move to live in densely populated cities, we almost inevitably face living in closer proximity to our neighbours. Neighbour noise can certainly be a source of annoyance – but could it even be damaging to our health?
Increasing evidence suggests that unwanted noise can cause sleep deprivation, distraction and annoyance, as presenter Anand Jagatia finds out. He discovers that noise annoyance has a small but significant impact on our wider health – including our cardiovascular system – but that annoyance is not necessarily down to sound alone. Factors such as perception of the neighbourhood and relationships with our neighbours also play a part.
CrowdScience has examined living with unwanted noises before, and we revisit our trip to the acoustics lab at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK. Here, we meet the researchers and engineers investigating the best ways to make our homes more pleasant for our ears whilst still maintaining the ‘buzz’ of city life.
Contributors:
Contributors:
Professor Charlotte Clark, St George’s University of London
Professor Trevor Cox, University of Salford Manchester
Professor Bill Davies, University of Salford Manchester
Dr Mags Adams, University of Central Lancashire (formerly University of Salford Manchester, at time of recording)
Produced by Jen Whyntie and presented by Anand Jagatia for the BBC World Service.
The latest Nyiragongo eruption was not entirely unexpected, the volcano’s lava lake inside the crater had been building up for years. Local volcanologists say it was only a matter of time before an eruption occurred. The big concern was where the flank of the volcano would be breached as the city of Goma rests under the volcano and there are potential fissures even within the town.
However there are still questions over the effectiveness of seismic monitoring in the area, North Kivu. The Goma observatory has been unable to carry out this work due to a lack of funding. And monitoring is further complicated by the region’s long running civil war, with rebel groups often camped around the volcano.
We hear from Dario Tadesco and Cindy Ebinger. Who have both been monitoring developments.
Cyclone Yass was the second Cyclone to hit India within a week. Are these events becoming more common and are they related to rises in global temperatures? Climatologist Roxy Koll has been monitoring the situation.
Greenland’s pristine glaciers might not be so pristine. Jemma Wadham from Bristol university and her team have found unexpectedly high levels of Mercury in meltwaters - similar to those from industrial pollution. They say research now needs to focus on the impact for wildlife and people in the Arctic region.
And the elusive Sowerby’s beaked Whale doesn’t travel very much despite pockets of the species being found across the Atlantic. Kerri Smith has been researching this species, which is rarely seen alive. Using samples from whales beached or caught accidentally she was able to build up a picture of their distribution.
A brain-computer interface allows a severely paralysed patient not only to move and use a robotic arm, but also to feel the sensations as the mechanical hand clasps objects . We hear from Jennifer Collinger at Pittsburgh University’s Rehab Neural Engineering Labs. And Nathan Copeland, who has been controlling the robotic arm with his thoughts via a series of brain implants.
Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina tells us about the development of a multi-component vaccine that would be effective not just against the current coronavirus outbreak and its variants, but also future outbreaks from SARS-like coronaviruses that we don’t even know about yet.
Blood clots, thromboses, have been a problem for a small number of people following Covid vaccination Paul Knöbl, and a team of medics in Vienna have worked out the link between vaccination and clot development. They now have a method to treat such clots – so they should not be fatal.
And how did fungi and plants come to live together? Symbiotic relationships between the two are a key component of the evolution of life. Melanie Rich of the University of Toulouse has been looking at the present day genetic markers which allowed plants and fungi to help each other as they first colonised land millions of years ago.
Also...You are a star. Literally.
You are a carbon-based life form and those atoms of carbon in the molecules that make up your cells were formed by a nuclear fusion reaction at the heart of long dead stars. That goes for the oxygen in your lungs too. And the red blood cells that carry that oxygen to your tissues? They contain haemoglobin, and nestled at the heart of each molecule is an element (iron) formed by a supernova - the fiery explosion at the death of a star. Your body is a walking, thinking museum of some of the most violent events in the universe.
This, as CrowdScience host Marnie Chesterton discovers, isn’t as special as it sounds. All of the stuff on the earth - the elements that make clouds and mountains and mobile phones – they all have an origin story. CrowdScience tells that story, starting with the big bang and ending with physicists, creating new elements in the lab. Find out the age of the elements and the distance they have travelled to make their current home on earth.
(Image: Artificial tactile perception allows the brain-computer interface user to transfer objects with a
robotic arm at twice the speed of doing it without the feedback.
Credit: UPMC/Pitt Health Sciences Media Relations)
