BBC Inside Science

Flood modelling As parts of Cumbria and Somerset remain on flood alert, Adam looks at the science that predicts floods. Are our flood defences good enough and is climate change behind the recent cluster of '1 in 100 year' floods? Flood modeller Nick Reynard from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology explains.What is a scientific model? Prompted by a listener's question, Adam asks scientists what they mean when they say they "modelled the data". He explores the strengths and weaknesses of using models to represent things as diverse as the spin of planets and field choice of skylarks.Magneto-reception Is there a 6th sense? Since the 1960s, it has been generally accepted that animals have a sense of magnetism. This may help explain how some birds are able to migrate huge distances. However, ever since this discovery, the mechanism behind the reception of the Earth's magnetic field has remained a mystery. Scientists don't know which components are responsible for detecting the magnetism, hence the search for 'a biological compass'. The quest has united people from a range of disciplines such as animal behaviourists, chemists and quantum biologists. Are scientists getting any closer to finding the biological compass?Escalator experiment Regular commuters on the London Underground know instinctively to 'stand on the right and walk up on the left' when using the many escalators on the Tube. But in a three week trial at one of the busiest stations - Holborn - Transport for London staff are asking travellers to stand on both sides. The idea is to regulate the flow of traffic. Will it work?Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Science Funding Review In the Comprehensive Spending Review last week, the Government announced its commitment to protect the science budget in 'real terms'. After five years of declining spending on science, this has been welcomed by many in the research community. But a lot of the detail is still to emerge. Adam asks Minister for Universities and Science, Jo Johnson where the extra funds are coming from? Is it a case of money being moved around, between departments or is there really an extra £1.5 billion, over the next 5 years, in the science research pot?Carbon Capture Storage Five years ago, amid much fanfare, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, committed £1 billion to the development of carbon capture and storage - the technology to extract carbon dioxide from the exhaust streams of power stations, and bury it underground. This technology is one strategy for reducing our impact on the climate while keeping coal, oil and gas as options for generating energy. Given the discussions going on right now over in Paris at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21, this might seem like a suitable commitment for the UK's plans to address global warming. But in the recent Comprehensive Spending Review, the Government have withdrawn the money, effectively ending the current CCS research in the UK.Graphene In contrast, one of the many recent success stories in UK science, graphene, is set to be a focus of research in the Government's plans. Graphene is the world's first truly two dimensional material; incredibly strong, very light and extremely flexible. It is also capable of conducting heat and electricity, so it is a material exciting scientists and industry alike. Since the isolation of graphene in Manchester in 2004 the UK has been at the forefront in graphene research. This year the National Graphene Institute in Manchester was opened, with a remit to link basic, fundamental research to graphene commerce and industry.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Ancient farmers' genomes New research looking at the DNA of people who lived in Europe as early as 8500 years ago shows signs of evolution, of natural selection, and of how farming has changed Europe in the last few millennia. The huge sample of 230 ancient individuals includes 26 Neolithic people from Anatolia thought to be the very first farmers.Cern's ALICE Experiment Adam visits CERN in Geneva, to see ALICE (A Large Ion Collision Experiment). ALICE is designed to investigate one of the four fundamental forces in the Universe. The strong nuclear force is the most powerful, but only over a very short distance. It is what holds quarks together, and quarks stuck together in the right conformation make neutrons and protons. Protons and neutrons stuck together plus electrons make up atoms, which is what everything is made of.Listeners Questions on Astrophysics Space physicists, Dr. Carole Haswell from the Open University and Dr Andrew Pontzen from UCL answer your questions about the force of gravity, the size of stars, the volume of matter and more.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Antarctic ice-sheet instability A new study models how the ice sheets in Antarctica will react if greenhouse gases rise at a medium to high rate. They predict the most likely outcome is a rise in global sea level of about 10cm by 2100. Previous research had put this figure at 30cm: this has not been ruled out by the new research, but it's been ruled much less likely.Groundwater The Earth's groundwater has been quantified - it's estimated to be 23 million cubic km. (which is equivalent to the Earth's entire land surface covered in a layer some 180m deep.) However, just 6% of the water is available for our use and to take part in the hydrogeological cycle. That small fraction is referred to as "modern" groundwater: it is extractable because it is near the surface, and can be used to supplement above-ground resources in rivers and lakes. But it's also the most sensitive to over use, climate change and to human contamination.Fluorescent coral Adam visits the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton to see some fluorescent corals and asks how they can be utilised for medical imaging.Accents How are our accents changing? A three year study at University of Glasgow has found that Scottish accents haven't changed as much as English accents (which have become much more homogenised over the past 100 years). By listening to recordings from first World War Scottish prisoners of war, the Sounds of the City project has noticed that changes to Glaswegian accents have occurred over a much longer time frame than previously thought. But these changes have occurred locally - not in the same way or to the extent that it is thought English accents have evolved.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Britain's oldest tree changes sex - The science behind the headlines - this week it was reported that the Fortingall Yew in Perthshire (known to be a male tree, over 2-5000 years old) had started to produce berries (female) on one of its branches. Dr. Max Coleman from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh explains that sexuality in plants is more fluid than in animals.Cryo-volcanoes on Pluto The latest observations from the New Horizons mission to Pluto show possible volcanic-type structures made from ice. The mountains have what appear to be caldera-like depressions in the top. Unlike volcanoes on Earth, that erupt molten rock, the suspected volcanoes on Pluto, would likely erupt an icy slush of substances such as water, nitrogen, ammonia or methane.Sellafield's plutonium The nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria has amassed around 140 tonnes of plutonium on site. This is the largest stockpile of civil plutonium in the world. For now it is being stored without a long-term plan, which is costly and insecure. At some point a decision will need to be taken on how it is dealt with. The estimated clean-up costs are between £90-250 billion, which means the pressure to make the right decision is massive. Should we convert it into useable fuel or get rid of it? And how secure is it in its current state? Ant super-organisms Ants behave as a super-organism when under predation threat - complex chemical communication in rock ants are key to how they behave as a unit to different threats.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Grid cells and time Animals navigate by calculating their current position based on how long and how far they have travelled and a new study on treadmill-running rats reveals how this happens. Neurons called grid cells collate the information about time and distance to support memory and spatial navigation, even in the absence of visual landmarks. New research by Howard Eichenbaum at Boston University has managed to separate the space and time aspects in these cells challenging currently held views of the role of grid cells in the brain.Boole It's the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Boole. We speak to Professor Des MacHale, his biographer at Cork University, and Dr Mark Hocknull, historian of science at University of Lincoln, where he was born, to uncover Boole's unlikely rise to Professor of Mathematics, given his lack of formal academic training. We discuss the impact of his work at the time, and his legacy for the modern digital age.How your brain shapes your life It weighs 3lbs, takes 25 years to reach maturity and, unique to bits of our bodies, damage to your brain is likely to change who you are. Neuroscientist David Eagleman's new book, The Brain: The Story of You, explores the field of brain research. New technology is providing a flood of data. But what we don't have, according to Eagleman, is the theoretical scaffolding on which to hang this. Why do brains sleep and dream? What is intelligence? What is consciousness?Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Oxygen on comet 67P Molecular oxygen (O2) detected on comet Churymov-Gerasimenko 67P, has scientists baffled. Current models of the formation of our Solar System do not predict conditions that would allow for O2. Bees and antimicrobial drugs The antibacterial properties of honey have been exploited for thousands of years, but now scientists at the University of Cardiff are using honeybees to collect and identify plant-derived drugs which could be used to treat antibiotic resistant hospital pathogens. By screening honey for these plant compounds and identifying the plant through the pollen grains in the honey, researchers can narrow down the active ingredients and even exploit this to get bees to make medicinal honey. Reproducibility of science experiments A lot of science experiments, when redone, produce different result. Professor Dorothy Bishop chaired a report, out this week, on reproducibility in science. She explains why reproducibility is important, why failures are due to many factors beyond fraud, and how measures, such as pre-registration and collaboration on large expensive experiments, can help make science more robust and repeatable. Reintroduction of beavers In National Mammal Week and the Mammal Society UK is giving a whole day of its national conference at Exeter University over to the reintroduction of European beavers. In February last year a group of beavers were spotted apparently having been living and breeding on the River Otter in Devon for quite some time. By March this year an attempt by DEFRA to remove them had been challenged by local campaigners and now a 5 year watch period has been set up over which time the effects of the beavers on the ecosystem will be monitored. But how might the renegade rodents have been influencing the ecosystem? And with another project currently underway to reintroduce the Pine Marten, a large relative of the weasel, to Wales is there a new public focus on mammal reintroductions in the UK? Producer: Fiona Roberts

Animal experiments Scientists are changing the way they measure animals used in research. The most recent Home Office report not only shows the numbers of animals used, it also grades how much each animal suffered. Dr Sara Wells from MRC talks to Adam about this new measure, and also the fact that the overall number of animals used in 2014 has declined for the first time in years. Bees and diesel The polluting power of diesel has been getting a lot of press recently. Now, new research has shown that the volatile nitrogen oxides in diesel exhaust (NOx) are preventing bees from finding their food flowers. The diesel chemically alters some of the most common floral scent compounds, rendering them unrecognisable to bees and other insect pollinators. The effect adds to the suite of environmental factors impacting bee survival.Sense Ocean Adam visits the National oceanography Centre in Southampton where they are working on Sense Ocean - A big Europe-wide project which is monitoring what is in the world's oceans. Professor Matt Mowlem, is Head of the Ocean Technology and engineering group, and he is in charge of making sensors, which measure the chemical and biological nature of sea water from small platforms and vehicles. Readability of IPCC Report A paper in Nature Climate change last week scored the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers report, very low for 'readability', Adam discusses the trade-off between writing science that is right, and writing science that is understandable. Producer: Fiona Roberts.

In a special programme to mark, amongst other things, the centenary of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, Adam Rutherford is joined by The Film Programme's Francine Stock to explore the theme of time-travel - in science, in film and as film. With studio guest, science writer Marcus Chown, they'll discuss time-machines - as imagined by scientists and film-makers; the grandfather of all paradoxes; the notion of the multiverse and how the pioneers of cinema created their own 'time-machines' through the art of editing. And to mark Back the Future Day, otherwise known as 21 October 2015, they talk to director Robert Zemeckis about how and why he imagined a future with hover-boards but, oddly, no smart phones.Producers: Stephen Hughes and Rami Tzabar.

As evidence grows about the vulnerability of our ocean corals to climate change, what's often overlooked are the more subtle changes in the ocean waters that contribute to coral resilience. Adam visits Southampton's Oceanography Centre where new research is showing how an imbalance of nutrients in reef waters is increasing the vulnerability of reef corals to high water temperatures which could help direct future coastal management.The long awaited hunt for gravitational waves gets underway as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States begins its first observational run. The waves, generated by some of the most dramatic events in space such as the explosion of stars and the merging of two black holes, were first postulated by Einstein in 1916. So far they've never been detected but if LIGO is successful it'll not only provide proof of Einstein's Theory of Relativity but also provide the first direct evidence of the existence of black holes.And Adam meets theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli whose new book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics examines in seven short essays how 20th century physics is shaping our world view. In Italy, it's outsold 50 Shades of Grey and the Pope's Encyclical and has now been translated into English. What's been the key to its success?

A special edition recorded in front of an audience at Write on Kew, the Royal Botanical Garden's new literary festival. Adam Rutherford examines the science behind the global challenges and innovative solutions to preserving the essential biodiversity of the planet. From new perspectives on how plant populations can be made more resilient, to the remarkable genetic diversity of plants just being revealed by new analytical techniques, to coffee - and how one of our most prolific yet threatened commodities be protected from a changing climate . Do we need a radical new approach - are the large scale climate fixes offered by geoengineering the right solution? Adam Rutherford is joined by panellists: Kew's Director of Science, Kathy Willis; evolutionary botanist, Ilia Leitch, Kew's research leader in plant resources, Aaron Davis and author Oliver Morton.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

Adam Rutherford and panellists Helen Czerski, Andrew Pontzen and Nick Crumpton answer listeners' science questions: What's the best way to become fossilised when you die? What are the most genetically different animals than can breed, either in the wild or in captivity? Why are there no animals with green fur? If one of the fundamental constants, like the speed of light, was 50% faster how would it affect our universe and would the universe even exist? Can we infer where the edge of our expanding universe is from its age - is that even a sensible question? Would you experience zero gravity at the centre of the Earth? At a busy airport are the chances of meeting and finding each other better if one person stays put in a space while the other person searches, or if both parties wander around searching? Find out the answers to these and more.

This summer, the spaceship New Horizons sped past Pluto at 30,000mph, snapping photographs as it went. The pictures sent back this week have transformed our view of this former planet. It isn't a dead rock; it is geologically active, with ice volcanoes and plenty of terrestrial movement. Dr Cathy Olkin from the mission explains what has got her team so excited.The space elevator, first dreamt up in the 19th century, is a tower tall enough to reach space. The sci-fi concept took a step towards reality recently, when the Canadian engineering company Thoth were granted a patent for an inflatable tower 20 kilometres high. Adam speaks to Thoth's Chief Engineer Ben Quine about the viability and possibilities of this project.It's the season when 30 million European songbirds fly south for the winter. Lower profile and harder to study are the billions of insects that take a similar journey. Dr Jason Chapman from Rothamsted Research tells Adam how to study animals that are too small to tagCan you measure imagination? A team from the Hungry Mind Lab at Goldsmiths University in London thinks you can. The goal of their two year project is to produce an app that can improve imagination by training it. To improve it, first they need to reliably measure it. Adam tries out their new test.

Tracey Logan talks to Professor Chris Stringer about the discovery a new human ancestor, Homo Naledi. With ape and human like features its age isn't known yet but could it be evidence of the origin of the genus homo? Astronauts' spines can elongate as much as 7 centimetres in space because of the loss of gravity potentially causing severe back problems. Tracey talks to David Green from Kings College, London about a new elastic suit he has helped develop to mimic the effects of gravity. What exactly is quantum biology? Marnie Chesterton talks to Jim Al Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden authors of 'Life on the Edge, The coming of age of Quantum Biology which is short-listed for the Royal Society Winton Book prize. Tracey meets Dr Qadeer Arshad at Charing Cross hospital to try a new potential cure for sea sickness. By applying an electric current to the scalp is it possible to prevent the symptoms of nausea? A limited number of tickets for Write on Kew are available by emailing [email protected] with BBC Inside Science in the subject line.

Tracey Logan investigates the latest science news. Roland Pease reports on recent warnings that we're heading for one of the most severe El Ninos on record which could distort weather patterns around the world. Spongey sphagnum moss provides a protective layer to peat lands but in the bogs of the Peak District industrial and urban air pollution has killed nearly all the moss. This means the peat lands can erode releasing tonnes of ancient carbon. Tracey talks to horticultural ecologist, Neal Wright about his technique for creating tiny gel beads of sphagnum moss to spray on the moors to help restore their peat lands back to health. Marnie Chesterton talks to John Butterworth about his book, 'Smashing Physics' which is another short-listed entry for the Royal Society Winton book prize. He talks about the highs and lows of the discovery of the Higgs Boson and why CERN might soon be creating dark matter. Tracey talks to Toby Shannon, from the Institute of Physics about the International Year of Light citizen science project to measure air pollution using an iPhone. Details on how to take part here: http://ispex-eu.org/.

Why the expansion of the paleolithic brain was powered by cooked carbohydrates. Gareth Mitchell talks to Professor of Evolutionary Genetics, Mark Thomas, about the difficulties of establishing what our ancestors ate. More than half the world's corals grow in deep, cold waters, many around the shores of the British Isles. But a new study shows they are under severe threat from ocean acidification caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide. Gareth talks to Professor of Marine Biology, Murray Roberts, from Heriot Watt University about why these corals could all be gone by the end of the 21st century. This week's short-listed Royal Society Winton Prize book is Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code. Marnie Chesterton talks to the author Matthew Cobb. BBC Science and environment reporter, Jonathan Webb, joins Gareth from the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston to talk about why the grime on buildings could be a new source of air pollution and why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be used to make carbon fibres.

As Scotland announces it ban on GM crops and with the current post of chief scientific adviser for Scotland vacant, Adam talks to the previous post holder, Professor Muffy Calder about the role of science advice to government and her reaction to news of the ban. The Earth's magnetic field is weakening which could be a sign that the magnetic poles are soon due to flip. Daniel Lathrop and team at Maryland University are trying to model the Earth's magnetic field using a large molten globe of sodium. Should we be worried if a flip is on the cards? Royal Society Winton book prize short-list: Science writer, David Adam, author of 'The Man Who Couldn't Stop' talks to Marnie Chesterton about his experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Adam hears about the birth of a new galaxy seen for the very first time. He talks to Chris Martin from Caltech about his latest galactic research published in Nature.

The New Horizons probe is now millions of miles past Pluto, journeying throgh the Kuiper Belt, but still sending back gigabytes of data coming in via the Deep Space Network. Its latest image of Pluto's surface was released by NASA on Wednesday, of huge mountains emerging from an otherwise flat plain, Dr John Spencer one of the lead scientists on New Horizons, a planetary geologist, discusses what's to be read into the surface images captured over the last weekA new paper just published in Nature Geoscience shows that in 2013, which was a slightly cooler summer than average, arctic ice had grown, by 41% on the previous year. The study, uses data from ESA's Cryosat 2, which incorporates not just the surface area of ice, but the all-important number - the volume Adam examines the results with Rachel Tilling from University College London.Computing has taken a Sci fI step forward this month. Professor Miguel Nicollelis of Duke University, a specialist in brain machine interface experiments, has linked together the brains of four individual rats in order to use the computational power of their brains to carry out tasks including image processing, data retrieval, and even weather predictions. But could this have a therapeutic use in brain damage? Professor Andrew Jackson from Newcastle University, an expert in called 'neural prosthetics' examines the potential.Across the animal kingdom, signals advertising when females are at their most fertile can be pretty striking. Humans are more subtle, though plenty of studies have shown that female behaviour and physiology does change during the menstrual cycle. A new study by Dr Robert Burriss from Northumbria University suggests that faces may be advertising a woman's most fertile time of the month. But are the traits too subtle for most people to notice?Producer Adrian Washbourne.

It's billed as the last great encounter in planetary exploration. For the past nine years the New Horizons spacecraft has travelled 5bn km (3bn miles) to get to Pluto On July 14th it performed its historic fly-by encounter with the dwarf planet.Adam Rutherford examines the first images from the New Horizon's probe and hears the first interpretations from mission leaders and scientists at the NASA New Horizon's space centre as the data arrives back to earth. Expect new light to be shed on the Solar System's underworld as first impression s reveal Pluto to be a champagne coloured body with 11000 ft ice mountains and surprisingly smooth surfaces that suggests recent geological activityFor people who grew up with the idea that there were "nine planets", this is the moment they get to complete the set. Robotic probes have been to all the others, even the distant Uranus and Neptune. Pluto is the last of the "classical nine" to receive a visit. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discusses how this 2,300km-wide ice-covered rock was demoted in 2006 to the status of mere "dwarf planet", but as "Pluto killer" Mike Brown argues, this shouldn't dull our enthusiasm.As Adam Rutherford reveals, nothing about this corner of the solar system has been straightforward. Little is known about Pluto's creation -but as the New Horizons probe passed Pluto for this first close up of the dwarf planet , scientists anticipate new insights into the evolution of our solar system and even earth's early history.With contributions from mission scientists Alan Stern, Fran Bagenell, Joel Parker and astronomer Mark Showalter. Updates too as interpretations rapidly develop, from BBC correspondent Jonathan Amos and astrophysicist Chris Lintott.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Adam Rutherford talks to Emily Holmes from the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, about two new studies on preventing intrusive memories. She discusses why stopping someone from sleeping after seeing a lab based film of traumatic events like a news reel or car crash may actually stop people from forming intrusive memories about those films. This offers an intriguing insight in to the role that sleep has in consolidating intrusive and possibly traumatic memories. She also explains how if memories of a traumatic event are laid down, why playing a computer game like Tetris could disrupt that memory and stop it from becoming intrusive. Silent Aircraft: The Davies report recently recommended a new, third runway should be built at Heathrow airport but as flight numbers increase how quiet can planes of the future become? Adam talks to Jeremy Astley from Southampton University and Michael Carley from Bath University about where the noise in jet engines comes from, how engineering can make them quieter and will the silent aircraft initiative ever make a truly silent aircraft.Nuclear Fusion. For decades scientists have tried to harness the power of the Sun to smash atomic nuclei together to create a clean, limitless energy source from nuclear fusion. Marnie Chesterton talks to scientists from Tokomak energy about their new design for a Tokomak machine that has already exceeded previous records. Could it be a vital step forward in the quest for nuclear fusion on Earth?New Horizons: On 14th July 2015 the spaceship, New Horizons will complete its 10 year mission to flyby Pluto. BBC Science correspondent Jonathan Amos gives Adam a preview and tells him why he's so excited about the mission and what they hope to discover about the darker regions of our Solar System.

Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire has just finished trials of a new way to repel aphids from wheat. It's a clever system, that takes a gene for a pheromone, called E beta farnesene, from peppermint, and inserts it into wheat. Aphids let off E Beta Farnesene when they are under attack or when a dead bug is detected, and idea was to have the wheat produce the chemical alarm itself. In the lab, the plants had driven aphids away in their droves. But in the field, where controlled lab conditions are not present, there was no measurable reduction. So what's gone wrong? Adam speaks to spoke to plant geneticist to Dr Gia Aradottir who worked on the Rothamsted trial and Professor Mike Bevan of the John Innes Institute.Top biologists have recently met to launch the National Institutes for Bioscience, the N.I.B, a star-studded partnership of eight great British biological Institutes, such as the Roslin- former home of Dolly the Sheep - and the world's longest running agricultural research station Rothamsted Research. George Freeman MP, Britain's first Minister for Life Sciences, provided a bit of glamour to mark the occasion. Tracey Logan was there to meet the key scientists and to ask the Minister about the ambition and role of the N.I.B.A team of scientists has just revealed how they've used genetics to scan the peoples of the world - and amazingly of extinct people from prehistory - to see who can smell what. They've used one particular olfactory receptor, called OR7D4, to build up a global map of what people can smell. Adam Rutherford speaks to Professor Matthew Cobb, from Manchester University to discuss how the different peoples of the world - including long extinct humans - smell different things. Why are parrots such good copycats? A team in Duke University in the US thinks that they have uncovered the exact spot in the brain that gives the parrot this ability. Professor Erich Jarvis studies the genes involved in the structure of bird-brains, and discusses some ideas about how those neurons have developed through a combination of behaviour and genetics.

Malaria is the single greatest cause of death that humankind has ever experienced, and continues to be a colossal burden on the health of people all over the world. We've had various treatments over the years, but all of them have been weakened when Plasmodium - the parasite that causes the disease - evolves resistance. So the hunt is perpetually on for novel antimalarial drugs. This month, a new one is published in the journal Nature. Adam Rutherford talks to Professor Ian Gilbert from the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee University to discuss with him how the new compound attacks the plasmodium parasite to prove effective. Radio 3 is currently in the midst of a season focusing on all aspects of the Classical Voice. Science is playing a growing insightful role in understanding how to get the best out of the singing voice. Many singers base their careers on a particular quality of voice, and that sometimes can sound as though we're imposing a lot of strain on our vocal cords. We hear from Julian McGlashan, an Ear Nose and Throat specialist at Nottingham University Hospitals who has taken singers and placed a video endoscope down each of their throats to observe how their vocal tracts behave differently according to the style they sing. And David Howard head of the Audio Lab at York University, discusses how new technology is helping us understand how it's possible for a singer's voice to cut above the sound of an orchestra and still be heard at the back of a vast auditorium.Species might seem like an obvious way to classify organisms, and one way we define species is by reproductive isolation - If you can't breed with it, it's another species. If we successfully bred with Neanderthals, and produced fertile offspring, surely that means that they must be the same species as us? Adam talks to Professor of evolutionary genetics from UCL Mark Thomas to navigate through the messy world of human species.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

The ALMA telescope array in the Atacama Desert is one of the most sensitive earth based telescopes. It has now captured images of the very first galaxies. Adam talks to Dr Mark Swinbank of Durham University who's part of the team who've unleashed data this week from that universal hinterland that's set to fill in the missing gaps in our understanding of the evolution of the universe.The European Parliament voted this week to place a moratorium on new licences for member states to frack for shale gas until proven safe for the environment. But how dangerous is fracking? A set of articles out this week in the journal Seismological Research Letters attempts to address and dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about fracking, and to get to the root of the very real, increasing frequency of seismic activity. US Geologist Justin Rubinstein and University of Strathclyde geologist Zoe Shipton discuss the evidenceAs global temperatures increase Ice Core scientists searching for clues to Earth's past climatic history face a ticking clock to gather enough core samples before they melt. Only a tiny amount of mountain glacial ice has ever been collected and studied, and in 2016 ice cores from the Alps will be moved to safer storage in Nature's freezer - a giant vault in Antarctica. Marnie Chesterton meets Ice Core researchers from British Antarctic Survey to find out why they need this archive.A new paper shows the first recorded instances of alcohol drinking in wild chimpanzees. Tanya Humle from the University of Kent describes the novel behaviour. With anthropologist Professor Catherine Hill, Dr Humle discusses whether "wild" chimp research is even possible in an age when human and chimp habitats overlap.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Think of earthquake cities and places like San Francisco or Los Angeles spring to mind. But London is also seismically active. 200 years ago, there was an earthquake under Trafalgar Square. Dr Richard Ghail from Imperial College London meets Adam Rutherford on the banks of the Thames to discuss the fault lines under their feet and what engineering challenges this poses.In the beginning, there were chemicals. A geological blink of the eye later, there was LUCA, the last universal common ancestor; a complex cell. How the chemistry became biology is one of the biggest mysteries in science. New studies from University of North Carolina researchers chips away at this unknown, offering evidence on how the genetic code developed in two stages. Adam meets Dr Matt Powner, a chemist at University College London studying the origins of life, to find out how researchers try to answer this fundamental question. How do we know what our landscape used to landscape? Pollen, from buried mud layers, offers a picture of sorts. By gathering tiny pollen grains, and identifying the plant species at different ages, Dr Ralph Fyfe from Plymouth University builds up a picture of European landscapes thousands of years ago. Peak deforestation happened several thousand years ago, as our pyromaniacal ancestors started forest fires to clear land for agriculture. Roland Pease reports.A plague is killing thousands of common frogs in ponds across the UK. Ranavirus causes ulcers on the skin and haemorrhaging. A team at Exeter University has noticed that ponds with fish are more likely to have an outbreak of this virus. Amber Griffiths urges Radio 4 listeners to leave their ponds to the wildlife, and keep frogs and goldfish apart.

We're becoming more reliant on robots to assist in hostile zones from extinguishing forest fires to bomb disposal to decontaminating nuclear facilities. But whereas humans can quickly adapt to injuries, current robots cannot 'think outside the box' to find a new behaviour when they get damaged. Tracey Logan speaks to computer scientist Jeff Clune who's developed a new way to allow robots to adapt to damage in less than two minutes. It will enable more robust, effective, autonomous robots, and may shed light on the principles that animals use to adapt to injury.

El Nino is a weather event that happens every 5 years. It leaves Europe largely unscathed but causes havoc around the southern hemisphere. El Nino causes droughts, floods and has even been linked to an increased incidence of war. And yet it is surprisingly hard to predict. Adam speaks to Professor Adam Scaife, from the Met Office, about unpicking the science from weather chaos.Echolocation is the ability to sense objects using reflected sound. A handful of animal species do this - most bats, some whales and even a few humans. Some blind people use echolocation to navigate the world they can't see. Some make a clicking sound as they walk. Others use the sound of their footfall. In fact, all humans, sighted and unsighted, do it. Adam meets BBC's Damon Rose, who is blind, and they compare skills.Marnie Chesterton travels to Southampton University's Institute of Sound and Vibration Research to meet Daniel Rowan. His team have recently isolated some of the factors necessary to echolocate. The work involved an anechoic chamber - the quietest place on earth and the sound equivalent of nothing.Last week Adam gave the incorrect reason for why we have seasons. Dr Laura Rogers, a physics teacher, puts him right.Dr Rhys Jones, star of BBC TV's Wildlife Patrol talks to Adam about the origin of snakes. A recent paper from a team in Yale hypothesises a common ancestor with tiny hind legs and nocturnal habits. Adam questions why 3400 species of snake have evolved to not have legs, when millions of other animals find them so useful.

Many diseases strike harder and more often in the winter, including major inflammatory conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. New research out this week has uncovered the reasons why: it turns out that our immune responses are heavily influenced by the seasons. Professor John Todd who led this new global study discusses the results and how this could influence the way we administer medicines in future.Organisms generate energy in all sorts of ways and it can happen in all sorts of weird places, such as deep sea hydrothermal vents, where bacteria takes nasty stuff such as Hydrogen Sulphide, and turn it into useful stuff such as amino acids. This is called chemosynthesis. But it turns out that it doesn't just happen in dark corners of the ocean. As tubeworm expert Nick Higgs explains we are learning that chemosynthesis is everywhere.Major Tim Peake begins his six-month mission to the International Space Station in November,. Ever since its inception, the question of 'what the ISS is for?' has been asked.. So, what sort of science does it deliver? Richard Hollingham reports from Alabama, in a secret NASA research bunker.Two years ago, a team led by Nick Goldman at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge successfully took a collection of important cultural artefacts, encoded them digitally, and then wrote them in DNA. These included Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and all the Shakespearean sonnets. He's now collaborated with artist Charlotte Jarvis to encode a new musical composition which will also form a new art installation Music of the Spheres. DNA's ability to store complex digital data appears close to a reality. Could it hold the key to permanent long term storage for anything? Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.

Nepalese Earthquake The earthquake that struck central Nepal last weekend measured 7.8 in magnitude and has affected up to 1.4 million people. Inside Science reporter Roland Pease joins Adam to discuss the topography of Nepal, and its vulnerability to earthquakes. We hear from Roger Bilham, a seismologist at University of Colorado, and Alex Densmore from Earthquakes without Frontiers on seismic activity in the Himalayas and the difficulty in measuring the scale of the disaster.Monkey Nuts Capuchin monkeys use stone tools to crack open nuts they want to eat. New research by Madhur Mangalam and Dorothy Fragaszy has shown that they moderate the force they use to open these nuts based on whether the nut shows any cracks from previous strikes. This motor skill demonstrates their dexterity as they are picking the optimal way to complete their task. Scientists hope these findings could help to explain the differences in cognitive processes between non-human primates and hominids who learnt to shape stone tools.Maritime light pollution Around a fifth of the world's coasts are illuminated at night by lights and as LEDs grow in popularity we can expect to see these areas get brighter. But until recently the effects of this light on the marine ecology was a relatively unknown and understudied phenomenon. Adam talks to Thomas Davies whose research published this week has highlighted how light is affecting marine organisms; attracting organisms like keel worms whilst repelling others.Wellcome Collection & Bacteria Light Artists, microbiologists, doctors and geneticists will gather at the Wellcome Collection in London this weekend for the Bacteria Light Lab, an event exploring how light is providing the tools for discovering more about bacteria and infections, part of the 'On Light' weekend at Wellcome Collection. Inside Science went along to meet artist Anna Dumitriu and Dr Nicola Fawcett and view- what appear at first glance - somewhat esoteric looking pieces of art which are actually shedding light on the hidden kingdom of microbiology.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

The Yanomami people are Amerindians thought to have been completely isolated since their ancestors arrived in South America after the last ice-age. Now a multinational team of scientists has more than made contact with them - it's persuaded them to donate samples of their faeces hoping to find good bacteria and useful genes that people living Western lifestyles are thought to have lost. Maria-Gloria Dominguez-Bello, a microbiologist at the New York University School of Medicine, explains how this could provide valuable insight into causes and treatment of escalating metabolic and inflammatory diseases in the western world.With news this week of a British financier's arrest over alleged involvement in the Flash Crash of 2010, what are the pros and cons of the next new era of superfast computer-led trading? It's now set to happen even faster thanks to a higher speed, transatlantic communications cable that goes live this summer. Tracey Logan discusses new technological developments that get close to trading at the speed of light with science writer Mark Buchanan and hedge fund scientist Matthew Killeya.It's thought that light and dark are the main factors influencing our body clock, but in new research published this week the blue colour of twilight could be the major factor that keeps our clocks entrained to the 24 hour world around us. Tim Brown of Manchester University discusses why it's quality rather than quantity of light that's important.And there's a visit to the Geological Society in London to mark the 200th anniversary of the first geological map of England, Wales and Southern Scotland. It was compiled by the humble canal surveyor William Smith - but as geological historians Tom Sharp and Hugh Torrens reveal, Smith's ingenuity was to revolutionise mineral prospecting and help shape the scientific and economic development of Britain in the midst of industrialisation.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

On 25th April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was released into space from the Discovery space shuttle. Though off to a famously bumpy start - the first images sent by Hubble were blurry due to a flaw with one of the mirrors - it has been collecting data that has been contributing towards shaping our understanding of the cosmos and it continues to do so.The HST is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute located at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Tracey Logan speaks to Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the institute, who shares his perspective on the Hubble mission for the last 25 years and talks about ongoing Hubble projects.At the cutting edge of cosmology research, data recorded by Hubble is used to improve our understanding of such things as the universe's rate of expansion and theories about the hitherto elusive dark matter. A team led by University of Arizona astronomer Peter Milne has found hints that cast a new light on the currently accepted view that the universe is expanding at an increasingly faster rate. Could it be that a particular type of supernova - type 1A - is not the perfect cosmological "Standard Candle" we've thus far thought it to be?Another group of astronomers, led by Dr Richard Massey at the University of Durham, used data from Hubble in their attempt to unravel the elusive nature of dark matter. Dr Massey talks to Tracey Logan about how having a particular angle on a collision between galaxies some 1.4 billion light years away has allowed for potentially the first ever observation of dark matter colliding with itself. We still don't know what the nature of dark matter is, but this could be our first knowledge of it interacting with anything, possibly implying "Dark Forces" at work. This new research is put into perspective by Dr Malcom Fairbairn, who has revived the neglected telescope on the roof of King's College London. He talks to Tracey Logan about how these recent findings could herald genuinely new areas of physics.Meanwhile, closer to earth rocks, what could or should be done about the danger of asteroid impact? This week in Frascati, Italy, the European Space Agency hosts the 2015 Planetary Defence Conference. Detlef Koschny, head of ESA's Near Earth Object section, speaks to Tracey Logan about coordinating global efforts.Producer: Marnie Chesterton.

This month sees the end of NASA's MESSENGER mission to Mercury. It's been the first mission to the sun's closest planet since Mariner 10 flew by in the mid-1970s. Lucie Green speaks to geologist Professor Pete Schultz of Brown University about the orbiter's 4 year surveillance and how new observations of this under explored world are shedding light on the planet's mysterious dark cratered surface.Virtual experiences are coming closer and closer to reality as both sound and vision, and even smell, become convincing. But without the sense of touch you'll never have the full experience. A team at Bristol University has now managed to generate the feeling of pressure projected directly onto your bare, empty hands. Its system enables you to feel invisible interfaces, textures and virtual objects through the use of ultrasound. Roland Pease gets a hands on experience.One of the biggest challenges in artificial intelligence is conquering a computer's so-called "catastrophic forgetting": as soon as a new skill is learned others get crowded out, which makes artificial computer brains one trick ponies. Jeff Clune of Wyoming University directs the Evolving Artificial Intelligence Lab and has tested the idea that computer brains could evolve to work in the same way as human brains - in a modular fashion. He shows how by doing so, it's possible to learn more and forget less.And there's a visit to the Ion Beam Centre at University of Surrey where, in conjunction with a project to restore the Rosslyn chapel near Edinburgh, scientists have provided a new development in stained glass conservation - scrutinising the glass contents at the subatomic level using a narrow beam of accelerated charged particles, to literally decode the exquisite features lost to the naked eye. Lucie Green caught up with the Centre's director, Roger Webb.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Invasive alien species from the cursed Signal Crayfish to the scourge of gardeners, the Japanese Knotweed, are considered some of the biggest threats to biodiversity. This year the EU has launched new legislation that attempts to limit their spread. But how big a threat are they to ecosystems? Science writer Fred Pearce author of The New Wild argues that ecologists are committed to protecting pristine environments from alien invaders, when we should be embracing the changing ecology that invasive species enable. Adam Rutherford discusses the conflicting approaches to invasive species with Fred Pearce and Dr Helen Roy - a scientist at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.Corals make up only 0.1% of the ocean floors, but account for up to a quarter of all marine life. A new exhibition at The Natural History Museum is showcasing some of the work of the Catlin Seaview Survey, which is compiling a huge pictorial health check of various reefs to act as a snapshot against which all future reef changes can be compared. We hear from Dr Ken Johnson, the Museum's main coral researcher, and Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, - Chief Scientist for the Catlin Seaview Survey.There's a big gap in understanding the evolution of our brains. But experts, from geologists to computer scientists by way of marine biologists have recently been meeting at the Royal Society, for a symposium entitled 'Origin and Evolution of the Nervous System' to assess what evidence there is. Roland Pease reports.And we explore a new advance in virtual reality. Anil Seth, professor of Consciousness Studies at the Sackler Centre at Sussex University has been experimenting with our sense of self, and our experience of the world, by using a hi tech headset combined with 360 degree cameras to transport your whole experience to a different space. Virtual reality becomes "substitutional" reality'.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

The Romans, Vikings and Normans ruled Britain for many years, but few left their genetic calling cards behind in the DNA of today's mainland Caucasian population. That's one of the insights from the most comprehensive analysis yet of the genetic make-up of the UK's white British population. As the study's lead author Peter Donnelly explains it's produced some big surprises, not least how in contrast, the Anglo Saxons invasion was to account for up to 40% of the genetic mix in much of southern Britain. Much of Britain's current historical information is from a relatively small subset of people, but a genetic study like this sheds light on the history of the masses.The Royal Botanical Gardens Kew is currently at the forefront of trialling drone technology to map and locate remote vegetation The aim is to examine plant health and deforestation in detail, particularly in inaccessible areas around the globe. The team led by Justin Moat and Oliver Whaley have recently returned from Peru, where they've examined the fragile ecosystem threatened by mining in the Lomas region. BBC Inside Science's Sue Nelson was deployed to join the Kew team for a Drone test run.As our energy needs become greater, the impetus to tap the sun's energy directly becomes ever more urgent. A new paper published this month has cracked one of the barriers to efficient conversion of water into oxygen and hydrogen, which plants of course do naturally. Adam Rutherford speaks to Nathan Lewis at California's Institute of Technology who has developed an electrically conductive film that could enable devises to harness sunlight to split water into hydrogen. Chemist Andrea Sella assesses how close we are to achieving artificial photosynthesis and solar fuels.And ahead of tomorrow's solar eclipse, Adam speaks to solar scientist Dr Huw Morgan from the University of Aberystwyth, who together with his colleagues in Svalbard is going to use those precious seconds to answer one of the great enduring mysteries of the sun: why is the corona, the fiery crown around the orb, is a great deal hotter than the sun itself?Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Today CERN announced that on 23rd March the largest single machine the world has ever seen gets plugged in, switched on, and rebooted after a 2 year rest. The Large Hadron Collider was crashing particles at energies just off the speed of light, and in doing so, simulating the universe in its neonatal form. It will be shortly achieving energies twice as great as before and as Adam Rutherford hears from particle physicists Tara Shears and Malcolm Fairbairn, vast new opportunities for discovery will open upIn The Archers, the current devastation caused by the rising of the River Am is a stark reminder of the impact of last year's floods and the unpredictable nature of river channels. But a new study argues that if we're to get a better grip on the hazard posed by a river - and even predict the likelihood it will flood - an overlooked factor needs to be embraced. Louise Slater from Queen Mary University of London discusses the missing piece in the puzzleNASA's Space Launch System, or SLS, will be capable of taking astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the end of the Apollo era in 1972.Its first - unmanned - launch is due in 2018 and yesterday the first ground test on two of the massive boosters was successfully completed . BBC Future Space Correspondent, Richard Hollingham, reports from NASA's assembly facility to get the measure of this interstellar behemoth.The golden age of violin making was dominated by master violinmaking families from the 17th and 18th centuries but what accounts for their revered acoustic power? Adam speaks to violin virtuoso Tasmin Little and hears of a new study by acoustician Nicholas Makris from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who's scanned, measured and documented the violin's changing dimensions to try and account for the unique fullness of sound during this era.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

How does the brain lay down memory? For decades the limits of microscopes have meant that a detailed look at the way brain cells encode particular learned skills and events has proved elusive. But in a report published this week a team of researchers has identified how changes in specific connections encode a particular behavioural response. Adam Rutherford talks to Tony Zador of Cold Spring Harbour laboratories who's become the first to crack a piece of the neural code for learning and memory which could have profound medical insights.350 years ago this week, the world's first scientific journal was published. Philosophical Transactions began by drawing together various letters and reviews that cemented the origin of modern science by publishing Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren and other founding members of the esteemed Royal Society. Historian Dr Aileen Fyfe discusses the key moments in the journal's evolution and its legacy today.There's a look at the ongoing representation of women in science following on from a recent report examining the Royal Society's 2014 university research fellows of which only 2 out of 43 were women. The Society's President Sir Paul Nurse discusses how the imbalance in this and in science more generally should be addressed.NASA's Dawn spacecraft is about to arrive in the orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres and will be the first mission ever to successfully visit a dwarf planet. As the spacecraft spirals closer, images have shown numerous craters and mysterious bright spots that scientists believe could reveal how Ceres formed and offer new clues to the origins of our solar system. Adam talks to the mission's deputy scientist Carol Raymond on the latest interpretations of what's currently being observed.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

A computer system has taught itself how to play dozens of video games. AI researchers claim this is a significant step toward machine intelligence, because the learning process is similar to how humans learn. The program, labelled DQN by its creators at Google DeepMind, performed as well as or better than humans at assorted Atari video games, such as Breakout, and Pong. This style of "Deep learning" is useful because it can be more readily applied to real world scenarios. As Adam Rutherford discovers,it's a short step from mastering a driving simulation game to self-driving cars.Desalination to produce fresh drinking water is on the rise, but the bi-products of the process - acidic brine and carbon dioxide, are a growing environmental problem Adam Rutherford talks to Dr Philip Davies who's devised a new idea for treating brine from desalination plants that could help curb carbon dioxide emissions and go a long way towards addressing acidification of our oceans.Plymouth music festival, Biomusic, features a new work by composer Eduardo Miranda, inspired by a fungus mould. Roland Pease meets the musical pioneer who finds music in biological tissuesA new exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation explores the history, science and art of forensic medicine, from the crime scene to the courtroom. Adam heads down to 'Forensics: the anatomy of crime' for a tour with forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop, who worked on high profile cases including the murders of both Damilola Taylor and Stephen Lawrence, and also meets exhibition curator Lucy Shanahan.

Alzheimer's disease is becoming increasingly common as the global population ages. It is estimated that currently 44 million victims of Alzheimer's dementia exist in the world and that this will grow to more than 100 million cases by 2050. The announcement this week of the creation of the Drug Discovery Alliance - a network of labs to fast track dementia treatment aims to address the urgent need to identify drugs that prevent, slow the progression, or improve the symptoms of Alzheimer's. But what are the scientific hurdles and what's missing in our knowledge in fuelling an ambition to achieve a disease modifying therapy for dementia? Adam Rutherford speaks to Cambridge University neuroscientist Rick Livesey, and to Eric Karran, Director of Research at Alzheimer's UKHow is it possible to remember something initially and then change your account of the experience later on? Possibly, giant swathes of your own personal history are partially fictional if not completely false. The problem isn't that our memory is bad, but that we believe it isn't. Adam talks to forensic psychologist Julia Shaw whose astonishing new research examines the ability to implant completely made-up rich false memories into ordinary people in a lab setting and points to circumstances under which police officers can extract false confessions.There's a visit to the UK's synchrotron light source at Harwell in Oxfordshire which since it started operations in 2007 has illuminating research on subjects ranging from Egyptology to virology and this year is opening its doors to the publicAdam meets Mark Kelly, one of NASA's twin astronauts taking part in a year-long space experiment to examine the impact of space travel using identical twins as subjects. With one twin orbiting on the International Space Station whilst the other remains confined to Earth, the aim is to examine how individuals with the same genetic profile respond to radically different environments - in particular the genomics of humans as they prepare to move away from their home planet.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

Adam Rutherford explores new insights into what lies at the very centre of the Earth. New research from China and the US suggests that the innermost core of our planet, far from being a homogenous iron structure has another, distinct region at its centre. He talks to the study's lead researcher Xiangdong Song and to geophysicist Simon Redfern about what this inner-inner core could tell us about the very long history of the Earth and the long suspected swings in the earth's magnetic field.Professor Andrea Sella, from University College London is a recipient of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize, in recognition, like Faraday himself, of exemplary science communication to the lay public. Andrea gave his prize lecture this week, describing chemistry as one of the 'crowning intellectual achievements of our age'. How justified is the claim? What have chemists ever done for us?The sea forms the basis of ecosystems and industries, and so even subtle changes to the waters could have serious knock on effects. Dr Susan Fitzer from the University of Glasgow has been wading into Scottish lochs to study shelled creatures; they form a vital basis for marine ecosystems and the global food industry. But what effects could ocean acidification have on this vital organism?And to mark Darwin Day Adam Rutherford examines the origins of Creationism and its most recent variation Intelligent Design. Why do opinion polls in the US routinely find that about half of the population denies the truth of Darwin's theory and believes instead that humans were created supernaturally by God at some point within the last few thousand years? He hears from historian Thomas Dixon, and from Eugenie Scott, former director of the National Centre for Science Education - a US organisation committed to keeping evolution (and now climate change) in the US schools' curriculum.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

As Helen MacDonald's "H is for Hawk" secures 2014's Book of the Year at the Costa Awards, a paper appears describing the hunting tactics of the Northern Goshawk, quite literally, from a birds' eye view. Suzanne Amador Kane of Haverford College in the US describes her work analyzing footage from tiny cameras mounted on the head of the predatory raptor.The Planck Consortium releases yet more findings from the very beginning of the universe. A new age for the very first stars confirms our best models of the universe. But analysis of the dust in our own galaxy edges out the possibility that last year's BICEP2 announcement did in fact represent evidence of inflation and the first observed primordial gravitational waves.And in the last two weeks, two giants of the twentieth century passed away. Science writer Philip Ball shares his thoughts on the lives of Carl Djerassi, father (he preferred mother) of the contraceptive pill, and Charles Townes, known as father of the Laser.Producer Alex Mansfield.

We all remember the floods across much of central and southern England this time last year, and the devastating effect they had on people's lives and livelihoods. Today, a group of researchers at Cardiff University published a report on how people's perception of climate change has evolved in the wake of the floods. To what extent has our belief in man-made climate change altered? Do we now regard last year's events as a sign of things to come? Adam Rutherford talks to Nick Pidgeon from Cardiff University's School of Psychology who led this UK wide studyEarlier this week an international group of climate scientists, geographers and ecologists met at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden to wrangle how we can practically make the best of the Anthropocene - the new geological epoch that many consider that we now find ourselves in. Gaia Vince author of Adventures in the Anthropocene, reports from the Stockholm meetingAt the UK's Satellite Application Catapult in Harwell, a project has been unveiled that seeks to offer real time data on the world's fishing fleet to help governments police illegal fishing. Pulling together data from shipping registers, satellite images, radar and ships' own transponders, Eyes on the Sea automatically scans for suspicious activity and can alert human users and allow them to see what ships are up to. The Pew Charitable Trusts hope that vessels carrying illegal cargoes can then be tracked across the ocean, and any port receiving them would know where they had been and what they had been up to.How complex cells evolved is a mystery. Current theories on the evolutionary jump, between 1 and 2 billion years ago, from life forms based on a simple prokaryote cell to the complex multiple eukaryote cells with a cell nucleus and a host of complex internal machinery, fails to explain much of what we see within animal, plant and fungi cells today. Adam talks to Buzz Baum a cell biologist at University College London who has devised a new testable model which appears to explain one of biology's most basic questions.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

It is likely that scientists will soon engineer strains of "friendly" bacteria which are genetically recoded to be better than the ones we currently use in food production. The sorts of bacteria we use in cheese or yoghurt could soon be made to be resistant to all viruses, for example. But what if the GM bacteria were to escape into the wild?Researchers writing in the Journal Nature propose this week a mechanism by which GMO's could be made to be dependent on substances that do not occur in nature. That way, if they escaped, they would perish and die.George Church, of Harvard Medical School, tells Adam Rutherford about the way bacteria - and possibly eventually plant and animal cells - could be engineered to have such a "failsafe" included, thus allowing us to deploy GM in a range of applications outside of high security laboratories. Adam reports from this week's launch in Paris of the International Year of Light marking 100 years since Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Amongst the cultural and scientific events at UNESCO in Paris, Nobel Prize winner Bill Philips explains how using lasers can achieve the most accurate atomic clocks imaginable and we hear how Google X is embracing new ways to manipulate light to ignite some of the team's futuristic technologies And as the global decline in coral reefs continues as a result of human activity, Adam talks to Hawaii based biologist Mary Hagedorn who is using unusual techniques normally adopted for fertility clinics, to store and regrow coral species that are in dangerProducer: Adrian Washbourne.

This year is the Food and Agriculture Organisation's International Year of Soils.Adam Rutherford, ably assisted by Manchester University's Richard Bardgett, takes a look at new research seeking to further our understanding of soil behaviour that determines much of our existence.A handful of soil contains many tens of thousands of different species of microbial life, all competing to the death with each other for nutrients and resources. Yet most of those species are very poorly understood, because hitherto scientists have only been able to grow a small percentage of them in the lab.Last week's announcement of a new class of antibiotic - teixobactin - owes a lot to soil; Two buckets of it from the back garden of one of the researchers.Kim Lewis of Northeastern University in the US describes the new technique that could open up the whole biodiversity of a clump of soil to future medicines.Meanwhile, Monsanto, Novozyme and Morrone Bio in the US are just some of the big agricultural corporations exploring what useful microbes could be spread on seeds and crops to increase yields and reduce the needs for fertilizers.Soils, apart from feeding us and helping us fight disease, also have a crucial regulatory role in our climate.Sue Nelson reports on a new soil moisture monitoring network being set up in the UK that uses cosmic rays to measure the water content. The Cosmic-ray Soil Moisture Observing System, COSMOS-UK, is being set up by the CEH, based out of Edinburgh.On a global scale, soils are a hugely important reservoir of carbon. Iain Hartley of the University of Exeter talks about the vast amounts of carbon - more than all the carbon in all the trees and air - held in frozen soils in the far northern reaches of the earth. If these vast plains of permafrost were to melt in a warming world, the positive feedback loop caused by the resulting methane and CO2 released could be a bigger problem than many of our climate models allow for.But could we manage the soils beneath our feet better?David Manning of Newcastle University suggests that minerals could be added to brownfield (urban) soils to help them capture and sequester staggering amounts of CO2 from the air to help us offset anthropogenic emissions.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.This week's announcement of the discovery of 8 planets lying within the habitable zones of their stars has again raised the prospect of an earth like planet existing outside our solar system, But if we're to understand how "earth like" these exoplanets really are, we need to gain vital clues from earth's "evil twin" Venus argues environmental engineer Richard Ghail. Adam Rutherford hears about his proposed new mission to Venus - a planet orbiter to examine the surface and atmosphere that will allow us to understand why Venus has evolved so differently from earth despite their apparent sisterlike characteristicsIn the more immediate future science correspondent Jonathan Amos looks ahead to some of the highlights in astronomy and physics we can expect in 2015 - from the switch on of the newly energised Large Hadron Collider, and the imminent results of the successful Rosetta mission to the comet 67P, to the long awaited flyby this summer to capture images of Pluto.Roland Pease reports on a revolutionary method of controlling microscopic objects using sonics. As we move further into nanoscale technologies - electronic, mechanical and biological, and often a combination of all three - this could potentially offer a solution to manipulating structures, many of which are quite fragile at this scale.And ten years on from the shock of the South East Asian Tsunami that was to cost the lives of over 220 000 people Adam Rutherford speaks to Dave Tappin of the British Geological Survey, one of the first marine geologists who went to assess the cause of this seismic event. What have we learned in the intervening years?Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Adam Rutherford and guests oceanographer Dr Helen Czerski, cosmologist Dr Andrew Pontzen and zoologist Dr Tim Cockerill answer the listeners' science questions.Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

Microplastics For the first time, scientists have studied the abundance of microplastics in deep sea sediments They have found that tiny fibres of plastic are everywhere and that levels found in the ocean sediments are 4 times higher than in contaminated sea-surface waters.Marine debris, mostly consisting of plastic, is a global problem, negatively impacting wildlife, tourism and shipping. However, despite the durability of plastic, and the exponential increase in its production, there was a considerable proportion of the manufactured plastic that was unaccounted for. But now scientists have found that deep-sea sediments are a likely sink for microplastics.Holey Ice You'd have thought, given how much water and ice there is around, that we'd know pretty much all there is to know about them. Among the notable facts is that ice is less dense than water - which is why it floats on your pond rather than sinking to the bottom. But like carbon - which exists in two distinct forms, diamond and graphite - the molecules in solid H2O can be packed in many different ways. And this week, scientists have found another completely different form of ice, which is perhaps stranger than all the others.Overeating Why do some people overeat? In order to find out, brave scientists tucked into 9000 calorie meals.Vesalius Andreas Vesalius, the founder of the modern science of anatomy was born 500 years ago, on the 31st December 1514. He was a proponent of, and yet, a strong critic of the ancient Greek physician Galen, who implied human anatomy from animal dissections. Vesalius challenged physicians and medical scholars to get their hands dirty and carry out dissections themselves.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Where does the Earth's water come from? It's thought that it arrived from space, carried by comets. But recent research suggests otherwise. Professor Katrin Altwegg is principal investigator in charge of Rosina - the tool on the recent Rosetta mission that is charged with answering this mystery.DNA can survive a trip into space, according to a recent experiment. Dr Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist from Leicester University, explains the implications.What sounds do the oceans make? Anand Jagatia reports. Dr Julius Piercy from the University of Essex listens to coral reefs. And his recent work could help us harness sounds to help restore damaged and dying coral reefs.This week, the new Nobel laureates head to Stockholm to pick up their medals. Among them is Norwegian neuroscientist Professor May-Britt Moser. The question on nobody's lips; what was she wearing? Which is a shame because she wore a Matthew Hubble dress featuring Grid Cells - our brain's positioning system. Discovering these grid cells won May Britt her Nobel prize. Polymer scientist Professor Tony Ryan from University of Sheffield talks fashion and science with Adam Rutherford.Producer: Beth Eastwood.

A NASA space capsule, Orion, that could transport humans to Mars is due to make its maiden flight. Given that this is a first outing, there will be no people aboard. The capsule will orbit the earth twice in four and a half hours, before splashing down in the Pacific. BBC correspondent Jonathan Amos is on location at Cape Canaveral and gives Adam the latest news.This is a step towards a crewed mission to Mars. But how do humans cope with being confined for the 8 months it takes to get there? The European Space Agency studied this question in 2010. 6 volunteers were shut up in a replica space shuttle for over a year. Engineer Diego Urbina was one of them. He shares his thoughts on taking part in a fake Mars mission.Philip Holliger from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge heads the team that two years ago built XNA, a set of genetic molecules that behave just like DNA, but are man-made. Like DNA, those XNAs didn't actually do that much, but this week, the team has published a paper where they have got them working. These are the first synthetic enzymes on Earth.Back in 2012, a shallow grave was uncovered underneath a car park in Leicester. Evidence suggested the skeleton in it was King Richard the Third. Finally this week, the DNA confirmation by geneticist Turi King is in. And something is rotten in the state of his lineage. Kevin Schurer, historian, and Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the dig, talk us through the DNA anomaly that hints at infidelity in the royal line.

Food Standards Agency report reveals 70% of supermarket chicken contaminated. Chicken: It's the nation's favourite meat. But today, a report released by the Food Standards Agency has revealed that around three quarters of that chicken is infected by campylobacter - a family of bacteria, 12 species of which are known to cause food poisoning. The estimated cost to the UK economy is £900 million per year. All supermarkets are implicated and all supply chains too. It doesn't cause outbreaks and thorough cooking kills all the bugs. Professor Hugh Pennington tells Dr Adam Rutherford why campylobacter is such a tough bug to crack. Can machines think? Neuroscientist, chess master and world-champion gamer, Demis Hassabis is this week's winner of the Royal Society's Mullard Award. In 2011, he founded an AI company, Deep Mind which was acquired by Google earlier this year for £400million.He tells Adam why he believes one of the best tests for artificial intelligence is an ability to learn how to play computer games. Why scientists study sex Sex between humans has long been something of a taboo for scientists. But the Institute of Sexology is tackling it head-on. It's a new exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection, a frank exploration of sex and the scientists who've studied it for the past century or so. Tracey Logan went to preview the display, and asked: Why do scientists study sex? Australopithecus discovery 40 years on 23rd November 2014 was a significant 40th birthday. Or, to be a bit more precise, it was a 3 million, 200 thousand and 40th birthday. On that day in 1974, Donald Johanson and his team in Ethiopia discovered the fossilised remains of AL 288-1, who became universally known as Lucy. Don talks to Adam Rutherford about the young woman who changed his life.Producer: Anna Buckley & Fiona Roberts Assistant Producer: Jen Whyntie.

Philae lander detects organic molecules on Comet 67P Rosetta scientist, Professor Monica Grady from the Open University discusses the latest news from last week's historic comet mission. Philae, the Rosetta robot probe, made history last week when she finally landed on the surface of Comet 67P. But she ended up lying on her side, and only in partial sunlight. Her batteries were on borrowed time. After around 60 hours, Philae powered down, and went into hibernation mode. However, her instruments harvested some data and now the first results are in.UK-led crowdfunded Moon mission Lunar Mission One aims to land a robotic spacecraft on the unexplored lunar South Pole by 2024. It's a space mission with a difference: it could be funded by you. For a small fee supporters can send a human hair to the Moon in a Blue Peter-style time capsule. And the spacecraft will drill up to 100 metres below the surface to ask questions about the Moon's origin, aiming to find out more about the minerals that exist there, several of which are potentially valuable. Our reporter Sue Nelson went to the British Interplanetary Society's Reinventing Space conference in London to hear more.The Selfish Gene debate As another bout of biological warfare breaks out between two scientific superpowers, Adam Rutherford gets to grips with evolutionary theory, with social insect expert Professor Adam Hart. He hears from Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson and finds out why, after forty years of promoting the idea of kin selection, E O Wilson now dismisses the whole idea as 'rhetoric'.Presenter: Adam Rutherford Producer: Anna Buckley Assistant Producer: Jen Whyntie.