Podcasts about producer adrian washbourne

Claudia Hammond explores the psychology of regret with an audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival. What role do rueful thoughts on "what might have been" play in our lives? Is regret a wasted emotion or does it have some hidden benefits? Joining Claudia on stage : Teresa McCormack - Professor of Cognitive Development at the School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast who researches how regret in childhood can shape our decisions; novelist and essayist Sophie White - whose latest novel The Snag List examines the opportunity to go back in life and follow the road not taken; Fuschia Sirois - Professor of social and health psychology at Durham University whose research examines the impact of those "what if" thoughts on our health and wellbeing. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Many of us tend to dismiss dreams as merely the churning of the brain— but for much of human history, dreams were taken very seriously. Claudia Hammond speaks to Brazilian neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro who in his new wide ranging book The Oracle of Night wants to recapture that seriousness of dreams and the science of dreaming, drawing upon on his extensive career researching everything from sleep and memory to psychedelic drugs. As brain scans have become more detailed in recent decades, MRI or magnetic resonance imaging - has revealed correlations between brain anatomy or function and illness, that have suggested new ways to diagnose and treat psychiatric, psychological and neurological conditions. But why has the promise been so slow to turn into reality? Claudia Hammond is joined by Sophie Scott, Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and also by neuroscientist Scott Marek of Washington University in St Louis. His new research offers some insights into why. Good listening is truly hearing what the other person has to say without putting your own layer of experience on top of it. But who's best at it – extroverts or introverts? Today's studio guest, Prof.Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster weighs up the latest evidence. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Ben Garrod and Jess French get under the skin of Mola mola the world's largest bony fish to unravel this bizarrely shaped predator's ability to swim to a huge range of depths. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Ben Garrod and Jess French delve deep inside the predatory Burmese Python to examine its extraordinary body plan that enables it to catch, constrict and consume huge prey whole. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Ben Garrod is an obsessive bone collector and wild animal behaviourist. He was destined for a career in medicine but a chance encounter with primatologist Jane Goodall reignited his life long passion for conservation and led to him managing and researching the habituation of wild chimpanzees in Africa. It was a chance to record primate behaviour that had never been seen before and examine how resilient chimps can be to anthropogenic change. Further extraordinary insights into the speed of evolution through the clues in the bones of island monkeys was to follow. He is a professor of Evolutionary Biology and Science Engagement at the University of East Anglia and the presenter of several landmark TV series on animal bones and extinction, such as The Secrets of Bones and most recently, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard. Ben shares his passion for the contrasting insights into conservation and extinction, the value they play, and describes his own extraordinary journey from exploring animal remains washed up on Norfolk beaches to years spend tracking chimps in Uganda to eminent science communicator and public figure. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Many of us take dietary rules for granted such as eating little and often, not skipping meals and keeping a check on our calorie intake. But genetic epidemiologist Professor Tim Spector argues we need to re-evaluate what we think we know about a good diet: diversity in both the types of food we eat and in the unique mix of microbes we nurture in our gut is the most important factor for health. In a multi disciplinary career following early training as a rheumatologist, Tim founded the UK Twins Registry at Kings College London to unravel the extent to which genes contribute to a vast range of human conditions and diseases. But the puzzling differences he observed in identical twins would fuel his current research on the gut microbiome and the discovery that each of us has a unique mix of gut bacteria – in effect a chemical factory that dictates our highly individual responses to different foods. Tim tells Jim Al-Khalili how his research has evolved to successfully develop a new scientific approach to personalised nutrition – through technology that during the pandemic has famously been pressed into service to track Covid symptoms across the UK, and that's now revealing how a diverse diet has huge implications for Covid-19 outcomes. Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Professor Jane Clarke has had a fascinating double career. Having been a science teacher for many years, she didn't start her research career until she was 40. Today she is a world-leading expert in molecular biophysics and, in particular, in how protein molecules in the body fold up into elaborate 3D structures, that only then enables them to carry out their roles. How they do this has been one of the fundamental questions in biology and the key to combating some of our most challenging diseases, caused by the misfolding of proteins. Jane talks about her journey, from Tottenham schoolteacher to Cambridge Professor and Fellow of the Royal Society, and how, despite the obstacles she's encountered along the way, she's always been driven by her passion to understand the mystery of the machinery of life. Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Professor Andrew Fabian from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy has spent his career trying to unravel the mystery of how some of the most dramatic events in the universe can profoundly influence its evolution. For over 50 years he’s been examining our universe using X-ray satellites orbiting way above earth’s atmosphere . He’s built up compelling evidence that supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies are the engines that drive the movement of energy through the universe and provide the building blocks for the formation of new galaxies. They're extraordinary insights, for which he’s now been awarded the 2020 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, one of the world's most prestigious science prizes. Jim Al-Khalili hears how Andy gets to capture epic galactic events in motion to build up a picture of this vast ecosystem - and also how he earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for discovering the deepest note in the universe – a B flat , 57 octaves below middle C. Producer Adrian Washbourne

What is the best way of getting on with people at home and at work? Psychologists Emily and Laurence Alison have spent their careers working with the police as they build rapport with suspects, sometimes terrorism suspects or perpetrators of domestic violence. And their conclusions about how best to do it have lessons for the rest of us too. They discuss their new book, "Rapport: the four ways to read people". Claudia catches up with Helen who nominated a finalist in the group category of the 2018 All in the Mind Awards to find out what she’s been up to in the last two years. What can you do in middle age to protect your brain later on? Everyone’s brain changes as they get older, but some people maintain their cognitive health and others don’t. Rik Henson, Deputy Director of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, has brought together studies using brain scans with research where people in their 80s are asked to look back on their lives to try to work out the impact middle age activity can have on preserving your faculties. Do we have everything to look forward to in our teens and then realise later what life can throw at us? Bill Chopik Assistant Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University, carried out the largest study of its kind to discover when optimism peaks, with surprising results. Claudia's studio guest is Catherine Loveday, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Have you ever lost a loved one who was still a part of your life in some way? Did it leave you feeling confused or frozen about how to continue with life? Claudia Hammond examines the distressing phenomenon known as ambiguous loss – the enormous challenge of dealing with a loss when you aren’t sure what’s happened, leaving you searching for answers, unable to move on. The All in the Mind 2021 mental health awards have just been launched, where you can nominate the person or group who has a made a difference to your mental health. Claudia catches up with some of the finalists from the past to see what’s happened to them since, and what the awards have meant for them. What has the pandemic done to our memories? Anecdotally many report they keep forgetting things they’re sure they would have remembered before. Claudia’s studio guest, Professor Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster examines the new emerging evidence behind this phenomenon. Our brains are in two halves and they are linked by a structure known as the corpus callosum. But some babies are born without a corpus callosum linking the brain's two sides. A quarter of these babies grow up with serious developmental difficulties, while others have no difficulties at all, suggesting that somehow the brain is compensating. A researcher at the University of Geneva. Dr Vanessa See-freddi, has scanned the brains of children aged between 8 and 17 and has found that for some children the two halves of their brains succeed in communicating. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Claudia Hammond launches the 2021 All in the Mind Awards – a chance for anyone who has received help for a mental health problem to recognise the people and organisations who have gone above and beyond the call of duty. 1 in 3 of us will experience problems with our mental health at some time in our lives. Help and support from people around us can make all the difference in how we cope day to day and set us on the road to recovery. Between now and the end of January 2021 the Radio 4 All in the Mind Awards are seeking listeners’ experiences of brilliant mental health care and will recognise the people – the unsung heroes - who helped make the difference. There are 3 categories for the awards, the individual, professional or project: Individual Award : An individual family member, friend, boss or colleague who offered significant support. Professional Award: A mental health professional whose dedication, help and support made a really significant difference to you. This could be a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, nurse, volunteer or other professional. Project Award: A mental health project or group you took part in, either in person or online, which made a big difference to your recovery or the way you cope. The winners of the awards will be announced during a ceremony to be held in London in June 2021. Have you ever wondered what therapists are thinking while people sit opposite them telling them their innermost thoughts? Psychotherapist Philippa Perry discusses her graphic novel Couch Fiction which describes what actually happens during therapy. This can help many of us to understand the therapeutic process better. And we hear of a really simple way of raising achievement levels in teenagers in disadvantaged groups – by giving them three short writing exercises, taking just 15 minutes each. It might sound a little too simple. But preliminary research by Ian Hadden at the University of Sussex suggests it could have a profound effect. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Fake news can travel faster and lodge itself deeper in the mind than the truth. Fact-checking comes too late and lies have already spread like a virus. Claudia Hammond investigates a new approach to pre-bunking misinformation via social media by inoculating the mind through exposing people to a mild dose of the methods used to disseminate fake news. How underrated is humour? According to Stanford Business School researchers Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, authors of Humour Seriously, the frequency at which we laugh or smile drops rapidly from the age of 23 and the workplace is to blame. But as a tool for resilience and success at work, humour has some surprisingly powerful effects on the mind that we should all embrace. People with anxiety or depression are increasingly being prescribed spending a certain amount of time in nature. But are so called Green Prescriptions right for everyone? Mathew White of Exeter University discusses his new research that reviews 166 studies which suggest that for some, a walk in nature may be more of a chore than a joy. Could the strong psychological beneficial effects be achieved with a dose of virtual reality instead? Claudia Hammond’s guest is Daryl O’Connor, Professor of Psychology at the University of Leeds. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Professor Andrew Fabian from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy has spent his career trying to unravel the mystery of how some of the most dramatic events in the universe can profoundly influence its evolution. For over 50 years he's been examining our universe using X-ray satellites orbiting way above earth's atmosphere . He's built up compelling evidence that supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies are the engines that drive the movement of energy through the universe and provide the building blocks for the formation of new galaxies. They're extraordianry insights, for which he's now been awarded the 2020 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, one of the world's most prestigious science prizes. Jim Al-Khalili hears how Andy gets to capture epic galactic events in motion to build up a picture of this vast ecosystem - and also how he earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for discovering the deepest note in the universe – a B flat , 57 octaves below middle C. Producer Adrian Washbourne

The success of the recent SpaceX launch to the ISS has reignited talk of return manned missions to the moon and onwards to Mars. But beyond well know physiological effects of space travel on our bodies, what do effects of immobility and microgravity have on our brains? A new study offers a detailed insight from 12 fit astronauts subjected to a battery of tests in a microgravity simulator capturing changes in brain images, disrupted sleep rhythms and mood changes and cognition. As Ivana Rosenzweig, Head of the Sleep and Brain Plasticity Centre at Kings College London explains, her work has important implications for understanding astronaut behaviour and capabilities – and more immediately – the long term effects on the brains of Covid 19 patients supported on ventilators. Viktor E. Frankl, was one of the last of the great Viennese psychotherapists, who used his experiences as a prisoner in German concentration camps in World War II to write ''Man's Search for Meaning,'' an enduring work of survival literature.. A collection of his lectures, Life in Spite of Everything, is now published in English. His writings, lectures and teaching were an important force in forming the modern concept that many factors may be implicated in mental illness - opening the door to a wide variety of psychotherapies. Frankl’s grandson, Alex Vesely, together with the Viennese psychotherapist and former colleague Alfred Lengle, reveal how this newly translated collection of his lectures underpin his ideas about hope, resilience and ways to confront personal suffering, which continues to have great relevance to us in today’s uncertain world. When parents try to hide their stress, can they still pass on these feelings to their children? Sara Waters at Washington State University has been measuring the extent to which children “catch” their parents’ stress during interaction. The more out of control parents feel - and during a global pandemic that feeling is likely exacerbated- the stronger they have an impulse to reassure their kids that everything is OK. But it may be more comforting for kids to have their feelings discussed than just be told “it's going to be fine”. Claudia Hammond’s guest is Catherine Loveday Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster. Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Professor Debbie Pain has spent the last 30 years solving some of the most devastating threats to birdlife, saving many species from the brink of extinction. Her childhood passion for bird spotting drove her into conservation research with the RSPB and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. She's led scientific groundwork all over the planet: from reversing a dramatic mysterious decline in Asian vultures in the Indian sub-continent through to daring helicopters journeys into remote foggy North-East Russia in a bid to locate and conserve eggs of a hugely charismatic and threatened bird - the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. And as she tells Jim, her career defining research into one of the great hidden threats to birdlife - the toxic effect of billions of spent lead shot used to catch game birds - is finally turning the tide on attitudes to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of wildfowl. Producer Adrian Washbourne

There are a number of complications following infection with Covid-19 that doctors are continuing to find in hospitals. One of the most significant is an acute kidney injury or AKI which can come alongside the disease and NICE has just published rapid guidance to help healthcare staff on the Covid frontline who are not kidney specialists. Inside Health’s Erika Wright has been following staff at Southampton General Hospital during the coronavirus outbreak and meets Kirsty Armstrong, Clinical Lead for Renal Services, to discuss managing kidneys and Covid. Could injecting blood donated from a patient who has recovered from Covid 19 into someone who is ill help the recipient recover too? It’s a potentially viable treatment with a long history, known as convalescent plasma therapy, and trials of this technique against Covid are beginning around the world. We hear from Jeff Henderson, Professor of Medicine at Washington University in St Louis, on progress in the world’s largest trial of this passive immunisation against the virus in the US, and from James Gill, Honorary Clinical Lecturer at Warwick Medical School, who’s been following the latest game-changing refinement of this therapy. Just as the rest of us have been getting better at zoom meetings and remembering to unmute ourselves when we want to speak, so have GPs who are now getting rather good at having online consultations. Will this change the way we “go to the doctor” forever or is there sometimes no substitute for face to face contact? Dr Margaret McCartney gives a GP’s insights. As more people begin to wear face masks what kind of impact does it have on communication when a person’s mouth is covered up and it’s hard to tell whether someone is happy or cross? Claudia discusses this question with George Hu, a clinical psychologist in Shanghai where masks have now become ubiquitous, and Alexander Todorov, Professor of Psychology at Princeton University and author of the book “Face Value : The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions”. Are we more versatile in interpreting a masked person’s mood or intentions than we think? Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Every week we’re heading to Southampton General Hospital, where we’ve heard a lot about the doctors and nurses doing amazing work. But this week Erika Wright has been talking to Gemma Blanchett who does a job you might not even associate with the virus or with intensive care – and that’s physiotherapy. Gemma is a respiratory physiotherapist who has the joy of watching some recover with her extraordinary help. Recovery is going to be a long haul for some and can even take time for those who’ve had the virus with mild symptoms at home. So what do we know about how long a complete recovery takes? James Gill GP and Honorary Clinical Lecturer at Warwick Medical School discusses the latest insights. For people who have already found themselves worrying excessively about their health or who have an obsessive compulsive disorder related to hand washing, this is a particularly difficult time. With all of us now on the look-out for symptoms, Claudia Hammond speaks to Jo Daniels, a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at Bath University who specialises in health anxiety, and David Adam, author of the Man Who Couldn’t Stop – an intimate account of the power of obsessional thoughts. There’s been a lot of discussion about how to get accurate numbers for the people who have died from the virus outside hospital and one issue that’s been raised is whether doctors are wary of putting Covid-19 on a death certificate, when there’s been so little testing in the community. GP Margaret McCartney examines the current dilemmas. Amidst a host of trials to find effective treatments against Covid19, are there existing drugs which no one has thought of yet? We hear from Dr Lindsay Broadbent whose team at Queens University are testing more than a thousand drugs on human lung cells infected with Covid19 in the lab, to see what might work for both mild and more severe infection. Producer Adrian Washbourne

A range of potential treatments have been suggested for Covid-19 but nobody knows if any of them will turn out to be more effective in helping people recover than the usual standard hospital care which all patients will receive. Inside Health regular Dr Margaret McCartney talks to Claudia about how the first randomised trials are now setting out to test some of these suggested treatments with unprecedented speed and adaptability as potential new drug candidates emerge. During lockdown some find their mental health is put at higher risk. Katie Connebear is a mental health campaigner and blogger who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder eight years ago. She has experienced psychotic episodes and has coping strategies in place for when she feels her mental health deteriorating. She offers her thoughts on how to make small progressive steps in the absence of family and friends who she normally relies on when times are difficult. We’ve the latest in Inside Health’s regular visits to test the temperature at Southampton General Hospital. During the current pandemic maternity wards have to make sure that the birth of babies happens in a way that keeps expectant mothers, their birth partners and staff safe from the virus. Government advice includes pregnant women in the “vulnerable group" who need to take extra steps to socially distance, with extra attention after 28 weeks. Consultant obstetrician Jo Mountfield is keen to allay pregnant women’s concerns. And with isolation set to continue, we can also learn from people who have lived in a different kind of lockdown – and one that was in many ways more extreme. Beth Healey is an intensive care doctor currently working in Switzerland who spent 14 months at Concordia research station in the Antarctic, investigating how the team coped with living in such an isolated environment She reveals the similarities in life there and life under lockdown here. Producer Adrian Washbourne

As a professor of visual neuroscience at Newcastle University, Anya Hurlbert is one of our most respected researchers into the way we see colour. In a career as a physicist, physiologist, neuroscientist and physician at some of the great research institutes on both sides of the Atlantic, Anya's investigations into how we perceive the colour of objects has transformed our view of how our predominantly visual brains function. She explains how the multidisciplinary approach to research in vision from physics to psychology, and encounters with some leading Nobel Prize winners, has fostered a love of the slippery nature of colour. When, a few years ago, an online image of a blue and black striped dress spun virally out of control, it divided us all. Half of us were adamant the dress was white and gold, and the other half convinced it was blue and black, and it caused us all to question the objective way we think we see the world as it really is. Colour is, Anya argues, made in the mind, not just out there in the world and we don't always see it in the same way. And as she reveals to Jim, with recent technological advances in LED lighting, she's turned her attention to the nature of light itself, and how by controlling its components, it could have a profound influence on both our state of mind and the appreciation of our rich world of colour. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Sir Peter Ratcliffe, Director of Clinical Research at the Francis Crick Institute, as well as Director of Oxford University's Target Discovery Institute – has dedicated his life to understanding the body's molecular-level response to low oxygen levels, or ‘hypoxia'. He received the 2019 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with two Americans, William Kaelin of Harvard and Gregg Semenza of Johns Hopkins, for successfully tackling one of physiology's greatest puzzles - how our bodies sense and adapt so quickly to a lack of oxygen, at high altitude for example, or during sudden exercise. He talks to Jim about how his early medical career led him into a deeply unfashionable area of medicine that would solve how and why our bodies are so clever at being able to fine tune themselves to keep functioning under a range of conditions. His early ground breaking discoveries may have been initially turned down by a major scientific journal, but he would go on to pave the way for promising new strategies to fight anaemia and many other challenging diseases, most notably cancer. Producer Adrian Washbourne

There’s a growing number of children with severe allergies to peanuts and other foods. Parents and children themselves have to learn not only to cope with the physical risks but mental health issues that severe food allergies can bring. Rebecca Knibb, Associate Professor of Psychology from Aston University discusses how the psychological impacts are being addressed which until now have been slow to be recognised. Imposter syndrome is the feeling that you shouldn’t really be allowed to do what you’re doing and that eventually everyone else will realise that. And new research shows that it’s more widespread than we thought. Claudia Hammond discusses fraudulent feelings with Professor Richard Gardner from the University of Nevada, who’s done this new research and Dr Steve Nimmo, Editor of the Journal Occupational Medicine. How good at humans at recognising their dog’s emotions? Is it something we can all do or something you have to learn? Federica Amici from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has published new research on this little studied area, that could help reduce problems when human-hound encounters go wrong. Producer Adrian Washbourne

A recent poll of junior lawyers suggested that 93% of participants experienced distress in the last month and 19% had felt unable to cope. Those across the legal profession are experiencing higher than average levels of stress, anxiety and alcohol abuse. Can the profession adapt to openly accommodate wellbeing to balance the demands of the job? Claudia Hammond talks to Emma Jones, Senior Lecturer in Law at the Open University who is now conducting research with the charity LawCare on mental health in the legal profession, and Alex McBride, who’s a criminal barrister turned author. We all know that some of us are more sociable than others, depending on our personalities, experiences and the situations we find ourselves in. But could the microbes in our gut also play a part? John Cryan of the APG Microbiome Centre in Cork discusses his latest observations across species and in humans. Three quarters of mental health problems first occur before we reach our mid-20s. Yet much of the research is done with adults. Dame Til Wykes, Professor of Clinical Psychology & Rehabilitation at Kings College London, discusses a new initiative - the young people mental health advisory group - to ensure the best possible research is being carried out through liaison with a group of teenagers who have experienced mental health difficulties themselves. Producer Adrian Washbourne

Why do we have a strong desire to own things? Psychologist Professor Bruce Hood, author of a new book Possessed, and artist Hannah Scott, whose installation All this Stuff is Killing Me addresses our desire to acquire, discuss why we want more than we need and the extent to which we are controlled by our possessions. Cognitive behavioural therapy is one of the most effective treatments for depression but it only works for 45% of patients, so success is not guaranteed. Claudia hears from Filippo Queirazza of Glasgow University who's been using brain imaging techniques to predict an individual's likely success with the therapy. This could dramatically increase the odds of correct treatment for a patient. Talking to strangers is something many feel anxious about or reluctant to do but could it be good for your state of mind? Social psychologist Gillian Sandstrom of Essex University discusses her latest research: seemingly inconsequential conversations with strangers can have a surprisingly beneficial effect on mood and well being. Producer: Adrian Washbourne

A new discovery of abstract symbolic drawings on a rock has been found in the Blombos Cave, about 300 km east of Cape Town in South Africa. The fragment - which some say looks a bit like a hashtag - puts the date of the earliest drawing at 73,000 years ago. As archaeologist Chris Henshilwood tells Adam Rutherford, the discovery is a "a prime indicator of modern cognition" in our species. Nearly half the human genome contains genes that regulate what your organs should be doing at a specific time of day, This has enormous potential importance to the efficacy of drugs - what time of day you take them could be a real issue. John Hogenesch from Cincinnatti Children's Hospital has been studying the genes that cycle with our daily lives. His new database of cyclic genes could help plan the best timing for a host of therapeutic interventions Physicist Helen Czerski has been in the Arctic for the last five weeks, aboard the Swedish research vessel and ice breaker Oden. As the expedition comes to a close we hear about the team's attempts to elucidate the driving forces behind the unusual weather patterns around the North Pole. Inside Science has been profiling authors shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Society science book prize. This week it's mathematician Hannah Fry's new book, Hello World: How to be human in the Age of Machines. You can hear extracts from it on Book of the Week on Radio 4 all this week too. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Astronomers this week have been warming up for an encounter as far from the Sun as ever attempted. It's the finale of the New Horizons mission which successfully passed Pluto in 2015 and is now on its way to Ultima Thule - a Kuiper belt object on the edge of the solar system. Marc Buie is just back from Senegal where he and a team of fellow astronomers have been observing this ancient rock to get a final look at its size and shape, before the momentous flyby on Jan 1st 2019. He explains why the encounter will be so valuable in unlocking key secrets in the formation of our solar system. It's the 150th birthday of the discovery of helium, which, after hydrogen is the second most abundant element in the universe. It's surprisingly rare on Earth, but it makes up much of the content of the gas giants in our local neighbourhood, Jupiter and Saturn. Adam Rutherford hears from particle physicist and Science Museum curator Harry Cliff on how it was first discovered through a telescope rather than in a lab, and Jessica Spake of Exeter University who after an 18-year search has used similar techniques to discover helium around an exoplanet 200 light-years away. We hear from scientist and author Dan Davis from the University of Manchester, the next in our preview of authors shortlisted for this year's Royal Society book prize. The Beautiful Cure, is the rollicking story of how the intricate immune system came to be understood. And there's an update from physicist Helen Czerski. She's part of a 40-strong team of field scientists on board the Oden, a Swedish ice breaker and research ship. They're set to find a suitable iceberg, and moor to get to grips with the factors that guide the arctic weather patterns. Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

The sun still has many mysterious properties. The Parker Solar Probe, launched next week will be the closest a spacecraft has ever flown to our star. It's a mission that's been on the drawing board for decades which space scientists have only dreamt of. It will fly into the mysterious solar corona, where so much of the action at 3 million degrees centigrade takes place. Nicola Fox from Johns Hopkins University is the Parker Probe Project Scientist. Adam Rutherford speaks to her from Cape Canaveral, where they are making the final adjustments for the most ambitious journey ever, to the Sun. We meet two scientists who are making a real difference in promoting diversity and equality in the lab. Physicist Jess Wade has been chipping away at this issue, most recently in a heroic project to write up a Wikipedia entry for a scientist who is also a woman every day for the last 270 days and counting. Emma Chapman is an astrophysicist, and last month won the prestigious Royal Society Athena Prize for her work in driving policy changes about sexual harassment at universities. Today the shortlist of the most prestigious of the literary prizes for the sciences was announced - the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize. This is the 31st prize, and previous winners are a who's who in truly great science writing. Frances Ashcroft, Professor of Physiology at Oxford is the chair of the judges and discusses the books they have selected. Physicist Helen Czerski and 40 colleagues are now aboard the Oden, a Swedish icebreaker and scientific research vessel that set sail earlier this week. They are en route to spend a month anchored to arctic sea ice to elucidate the mysterious behaviour of arctic weather. Before she set off she gave Adam Rutherford a preview of the research trip. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

The European Space Agency's satellite Mars Express has identified what we think is a subterranean lake of liquid near the south pole of the red planet. The question of water on Mars has been around for years, and we've known about water ice, and there's been the possibility of seasonal flowing water on Mars for a while. But if this result is right, this is the first case of a substantial stable body of liquid water on Mars. Adam Rutherford talks to Roberto Orosei of the Radio Astronomy Institute in Bologna whose team made the discovery. Where should scientists be directing their efforts next in the light of this new finding? We hear from NASA's Chief Scientist Jim Green. We've been growing embryonic cells in petri dishes for a few years now, to try to fill in the gaps in our understanding of early development, but the tissue that grows never really resembles an actual embryo. Magdalena Zernicka Goetz is a developmental biologist from Cambridge University and in a paper out this week has leapt over this hurdle in developmental biology using three types of stem cell, which - unlike previous efforts - push a ball of cells to becoming an embryo, which could help us understand why pregnancy can fail. The Earth Biogenome Project aims to sequence the DNA of all the planet's eukaryotes, some 1.5 million known species including all known plants, animals and single-celled organisms. The project will take 10 years to complete and cost an estimated $4.7 billion. Harris Lewin from UC Davis is spearheading this scheme. How will he meet his ambition to curate all the DNA of life on Earth? For the first time, scientists have assessed how much of the seas are untouched by the impact of human activity. They're referred to as Marine Wilderness, and qualify as such by being relatively untouched by things like fishing, pollution or agricultural run-off. According to the survey, published today, only 13% of the world's oceans remain as wilderness. James Watson from the University of Queensland discusss the action that needs to be taken if these precious ecological areas are to survive. Producer : Adrian Washbourne.

The wildfires on Saddleworth Moor may well be the most widespread in modern British history. Thanks to herculean efforts by Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service and the military, they are now extinguished, though the peat continues to smoulder. Now the longer term ecological impact is being assessed. Adam Rutherford talks to geochemist Chris Evans from the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology about what's been unleashed into the environment from the burning of the peat and lessons we've learnt in maintaining peatlands. Coral reefs are noisy places filled with the clicks, pops, chirps and chattering of numerous fish and crustaceans. But a new study conducted on Australia's Great Barrier Reef shows that this noise has been quietened in areas damaged by bleaching and cyclones. Marine biologist Tim Gordon of Exeter University has examined how the changing coral acoustics are impacting on fish communities and whether a "choral orchestra" could help reduce the decline in local reef systems. Adam Rutherford meets Magdalena Skipper, the new Editor-in-Chief of the journal Nature. It's a longstanding publication, founded in 1869 and is the cornerstone of scientific endeavour. But how will Nature evolve as the demands on research change and scientific publishing continues to undergo a revolution in the digital age? In order to go very far in space, future astronauts will need some means of creating their own air and fuel. Katharina Brinkert at California Institute of Technology has succeeded in harvesting hydrogen from water in microgravity - overcoming a huge hurdle in the weightlessness of space, that may one day lead to a way to acquire fuel during a long-distance, crewed space mission. Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

Scientists have found the earliest known evidence of a human presence outside Africa. A set of 96 stone tools has been found in the mountains of south-east China, which is the furthest afield this type of tool has been located. The scientists who found them have put the date of these tools at 2.1 million years old, which is at least 300,000 years earlier than the current evidence for early human presence outside of Africa. John Kappelman, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Texas, discusses how we're now moving beyond a Eurocentric view of human evolution in Eurasia. Much of northern Europe has been experiencing a heatwave - notable for its intensity and duration. It's caused by "atmosphere blocking". Can we predict when these blocks will come and how long they will last? Adam Rutherford talks to Jana Sillmann, director of the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, author of a new study that has modelled 40 years' worth of heatwaves and blocking, and looked to the end of the century in attempting to predict blocking patterns as the climate changes. How can researchers get to grips with the shape of molecules in the digital world? Chemists have for years used ball and stick representations of the shapes their molecules come in. But when they publish, they have to flatten it all down onto a 2D a piece of paper losing crucial information. Bristol University's David Glowacki has put the power of virtual reality into the hands of the molecular magicians. Inside Science's Roland Pease went to his virtual lab, to see atoms dance in a molecular space odyssey. Given that half the world is in the dark half of the time, and the depths of the oceans are perpetually hidden from sunlight, there's lot of darkness to explore. For those of us drawn to the shadows, a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London does exactly that. Geoff Boxhall, professor of invertebrate biology, gives Adam Rutherford a tour of Life in the Dark. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

The northern white rhinoceros is the world's most endangered mammal. The death earlier this year of the last male of this rhino subspecies leaves just two females as its only living members. New research out this week has adopted new techniques in reproductive medicine as a last ditch attempt to preserve these animals. Thomas Hildebrandt from Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and Terri Roth, Director of Conservation Research at Cincinnati Zoo, discuss the ambition, and how realistic this approach is in future animal conservation. Earthquakes are scientifically measured with seismometers, but few are present on the sea floor, where earthquakes that can cause tsunamis originate. But could communication cables traversing the oceans fill in the gaps? Giuseppi Marra from the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, discusses his accidental discovery that fibre-optic cables might be registering the earth's vibrations. For the first time in the annals of science, a tweet was the key reference in a paper reporting on a discovery that a rare wild variety of the gardener's favourite - Heuchera, thought to be limited to a few rocky outcrops in Virginia - is actually abundantly present 100km away. It's all come about because of a picture shared on Twitter. Reporter Roland Pease retraces the tale of the tweets with the key players. Can the size of a roar be used to accurately determine physical strength?' Or can a roar deceive, and make you sound tougher than you actually are? That's what Jordan Raine from the University of Sussex decided to find out, not with lions or tigers or bears but in us. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Yesterday a small Japanese ion-thruster spaceship arrived at its destination after a three year and half year, 2 billion mile journey. Hyabusa2 is currently floating alongside the asteroid known as 162173 Ryugu. BBC Science Correspondent Jonathan Amos dissects the aims of this audacious sample-return mission and the initial images that have just arrived back on earth. There's a plethora of neutrinos flowing through your body right now. Adam Rutherford goes inside 'protoDune', the world's latest and largest neutrino detector whose prototype is about to be filled with over 700 tonnes of liquid argon and hopefully pick up a few signals generated by interactions from these elusive particles. We hear from project leader Christos Touramanis who is a particle physicist from Liverpool University. Caledonian crows craft tools with greater sophistication than most animals, and can learn to modify their tools to make them gradually more effective. This "cultural accumulation" is commonplace amongst humans - where we pass on information socially. But it's extremely rare in other animals to see them passing on knowledge in this way. Sarah Jelbert from Cambridge University discusses her new evidence that suggests crows manage to transmit their tool designing skills from one bird to another in this sophisticated way Our gut bacteria are emerging as key determinants of our health and the microbiome may even influence our behaviour. The interaction between ubiquitous bacteria and the food wild animals eat is beginning to be studied all over the world. Could manipulating the microbiome prove a new tool for conservation in animals whose food supply is under threat? Ecologist Ben Moore from Western Sydney University has been studying the eating habits of koalas and whether faecal transplants could alter the eating habits of this highly fussy herbivore. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

It's been 8 years since the Large Hadron Collider went online and started smashing protons together at just below the speed of light. CERN announced this week that they're ready for a massive upgrade, and on Friday last week, there was a ceremony to break ground on what is being called the High luminosity LHC. Particle physicist Jon Butterworth from UCL discusses the next generation of particle accelerators that are undergoing early trials and what the newly announced upgrade means for particle physics. Medical surgeons routinely stitch or pin organs and blood vessels with needle and thread and secure medical devices like pacemakers with hooks. But what if you could just use glue? Material scientist Terry Steele from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has devised Voltaglue, a flexible adhesive that works in wet environments by putting an electric current across an inert substance. He explains how this new kind of chemistry could revolutionise many medical procedures. This weekend Sir David Attenborough will reopen The Museum of Zoology at Cambridge University. It's undergone a five-year redevelopment, showcasing thousands of incredible specimens from across the animal kingdom, and exploring stories of conservation, extinction, survival, evolution and discovery. Adam Rutherford visits the new displays under the watchful eye of conservator Natalie Jones and zoologist and museum manager Jack Ashby. And Professor Tim Birkhead of the University of Sheffield discusses The Wonderful Mr Willughby - his fascinating new account of 17th century ornithologist Francis Willughby who together with the celebrated naturalist John Ray pioneered the way we think about birds in science. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

How good is your intuition - those hunches you follow because you're convinced you're right? Alas, if you think you're good at it, evidence shows you're probably not. Claudia Hammond hears the latest research from Dr Mario Weick from the University of Kent There's still time for you to enter the 2018 All in the Mind Awards. This is your chance to nominate someone who's made a difference to your mental health. You could nominate a group or project or maybe a friend, a therapist, a partner, a nurse - anyone who's really been there for you. We hear from GP Daniel Dietch - one of last year's finalists on the impact being nominated had on him after being put forward by a patient with bi-polar disorder. Medication taken by some people with psychosis or schizophrenia is designed to reduce delusions and hallucinations. What it doesn't tackle are the additional problems with memory and decision-making. Claudia Hammond meets Dr Natasza Orlov of Kings College London who's been trialling mild electrical stimulation to the brain aimed specifically at these symptoms. Could it improve everyone else's memory as well? And we catch up on what's happened to the very first high flying graduates we've been following who've been fast- tracked into mental health social work. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Neurogenesis is the process where we create new brain cells. Many researchers believe that if someone has depression then neurogenesis is reduced. Could this in some cases even be the cause of depression? It's possible this idea could lead to the discovery of new drugs for depression, drugs which don't tackle mood, but which encourage the creation of new brain cells. Claudia Hammond brought together Timothy Powell, MRC postdoctoral research fellow, and Sandrine Thuret, Head of Neurogenesis and Mental Health, from Kings College London to examine the latest research. The Government has committed to make prisons not just places of detention, but of rehabilitation. Some prisons are hoping that yoga classes could make a difference. Research from Oxford University is beginning to suggest that yoga can help with prisoners' mental health. Claudia Hammond hears from lead researcher and psychologist Amy Bilderbeck, Sam Settle Director of the Prison Phoenix Trust and former prisoner Richard for whom yoga was to become a vital tool during his years as an inmate. This week's Insiders' Guides to mental health asks with all the guidance out there in the public domain, how do you decide what is best for you? We hear from Stephen Buckley from Mind, GP Daniel Dietch and before them Lisa Rodrigues, who's had mental health issues herself and long experience of managing services. Psychologists discovered long ago that most of us think we're better than average at most things - the Lake Wobegon Effect - and that we go round looking for information that confirms our views on life - the confirmation biases. But there's now another bias in our thinking. If we imagine a theory is our own, we think it must be true. Aiden Gregg, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Southampton, told Claudia Hammond about his new research. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Claudia Hammond has been following some of the first tranche of trainee mental health social workers setting out on the Think Ahead scheme which is getting high-flying graduates into social work. As a 22 year old English graduate Al Toombs was one of the youngest people on the course. It's rare to be able to eavesdrop on actual sessions between mental health professionals of any kind and their clients, but Claudia spent the day with Al in Coventry on visits to clients such as Jo, who's lived with depression for several years whilst juggling a complicated family life. As we grow up we get better at tasks involving thinking. But there is something at which 5 year olds excel and that adults are really not very good at - and that is noticing things. New research by Vladimir Sloutsky, a psychologist at Ohio State University, shows that small children pay more attention to what's going on around them than adults do. It's a skill he thinks we've been underestimating and a finding that holds lessons for the appearances of our primary schools. In this week's Insiders' Guide to getting the best out of mental health services - what should you do if you're not happy with the mental health care you're getting? We hear from Stephen Buckley from Mind, psychiatrist Sri Kalidindi, GP Dr Daniel Dietch and Lisa Rodrigues, who has both experienced mental health problems and run services herself. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

For parents, it can be very hard to watch their child struggle with anxiety. Parents often blame themselves, thinking that it must be their fault that their child feels so worried. What can parents can do about it and how much of a genetic component there is in anxiety? Claudia Hammond meets Professor Cathy Creswell from Reading University who's done extensive practical research helping parents to deal with their child's anxiety, Thalia Eley Professor of Developmental Behavioural Genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, and Rachel - whose daughter suffers constant anxiety. When we see a photograph of a person we make instant judgements about how trustworthy or competent we think they are. But how reliable are these snap decisions? Claudia meets Professor Alexander Todorov from Princeton University who studies first impressions from faces and has brought his findings together in a new book called Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions. Politicians know people really care about mental health. So what are the different parties promising in their election manifestoes? We set Rachel Schraer from the BBC's political research unit, the task of scrutinising each manifesto and summing it all up for us. The next in our insiders' guide to getting the best out of your mental health services asks if it's a good idea to take a friend or relative along to an appointment with a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist? Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Whether you're seeing a psychiatrist, a psychologist or another kind of therapist, the tradition has been that the information all goes one way. Professional boundaries tend to be closely guarded, but social media is changing all that. A quick search online might tell you all sorts about a therapist. Should you engage in this kind of cyber snooping and how about the other way round? Claudia Hammond speaks with Louise Chunn, the founder of welldoing.org, an online directory of independent counsellors and psychotherapists and Susanna Hailstone-Walker, a psychotherapist. How can you overcome performance anxiety? For musicians and music students performing in front of audiences and audition panels, the experience can be terrifying. But this is where a digital simulation of the event could help. We visit the Royal College of Music where researchers have designed a concert hall which even includes a nerve-racking waiting area, and grim-faced judges reacting on a screen, to give students a chance to experience what it's like and to try putting the coping skills they've learnt into practice. The next in our insiders' guide to getting the best out of your mental health services asks what can you do if you're worried about the mental health of someone you know, but they don't want to go for help. We tend to think of the descent into corruption as a slippery slope where people do one small thing wrong and then gradually it gets more serious. But psychologists in the Netherlands have discovered that people are more likely to engage in corruption when there's a big reward and a sudden opportunity, than to do it bit by bit. Nils Kobis from the University of Amsterdam explains. Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

900,000 people in the UK suffer from heart failure - where the heart can no longer pump sufficient blood around the body. Symptoms can include a combination of breathlessness, fluid retention and tiredness - enough to have a severe impact on a person's quality of life. Getting a diagnosis of heart failure can be frightening, but there is good evidence that psychological input can make a difference. Claudia Hammond hears from patients and Dr John Sharp, Consultant Clinical Psychologist with the Scottish National Advanced Heart Failure Service, on recognising and dealing with the unique mental health challenges of this increasingly prevalent condition. The second of the All in the Mind Insiders' Guide to Mental Health Services asks what can you do if you think you're not getting the best from your GP, and, if you think you're waiting too long for treatment, should you seek a private referral? Our 'insiders' this week are service user, mental health campaigner and retired chief of an NHS Trust, Lisa Rodrigues, GP and All in the Mind Awards finalist Daniel Dietch, and Head of Information at Mind Stephen Buckley And Claudia Hammond talks to psychologist Ariana Orvell from the University of Michigan on why we use the word "you", instead of "I", more frequently than we realise. It's emerging as a useful tool to distance ourselves psychologically - and extract meaning - from negative experiences. Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

Adam Rutherford examines a new study published this week which reveals how a megaflood and giant waterfalls severed our connection to what is now France, resulting in the creation of island Britain and the watery moat of the English Channel. Jenny Collier of Imperial College London uncovers the ancient evidence dating back 450 000 years ago. The dream of unbroken sleep is a complex interaction between our environment and our genes, and new research is a step towards understanding the genetics of sleeping patterns. Jason Gerstner of Washington State University discusses his isolation of a gene that seems to play a crucial role in sleep across a number of species including humans. Turi King played a pivotal role in the identification of Richard III from bones discovered in a Leicester car park She's now involved in another infamous cold case - that of Jack the Ripper. Her interest is in the last of his five canonical victims, known as Mary Kelly, and she's authored a commissioned report on the possibility of identifying the body of Mary Kelly using DNA. And Paul Smith from Gardens Conservation International discusses the new Global Tree Survey - the biggest and the most comprehensive database of all the trees in the world - accumulated from 500 papers, and nearly four centuries of dendrology. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

As we dream of sending humans to Mars, the psychological problems of a mission loom large. As part of Radio 4's Mars season. Claudia Hammond investigates the mind-set behind the desire of those of us who want to colonise the red planet. What does it take to survive the confines of a 9 month journey and the enclosed pod-like environments that mission leaders envisage will be the housing needed to occupy this inhospitable planet? Claudia meets the wannabe Martian explorers who've been sampling similar long term simulations here on earth and the psychologists who've overseen the design, selection and planning for future communities in space. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

As we dream of sending humans to Mars, the psychological problems of a mission loom large. As part of Radio 4's Mars season. Claudia Hammond investigates the mind-set behind the desire of those of us who want to colonise the red planet. What does it take to survive the confines of a 9 month journey and the enclosed pod-like environments that mission leaders envisage will be the housing needed to occupy this inhospitable planet? Claudia meets the wannabe Martian explorers who've been sampling similar long term simulations here on earth and the psychologists who've overseen the design, selection and planning for future communities in space. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Ford has just announced that by 2021 it's going to have a driverless car on the road with no steering wheel. It sounds ambitious, since it is the intermediate stop on the road to full autonomy that's raising some of the big research questions at the moment. How can drivers enjoy the reduced workload of automation whilst still being alert enough to take control if something goes wrong? For a drive of the future, Gareth Mitchell went to Southampton University's simulator facility for automated vehicles to meet Professor of Human Factors in Transport, Neville Stanton. Neonicotinoid pesticides have been used widely in protecting the UK's vast acreage of oil seed rape. Research out this week claims there is a link between 'neonics' as they're known, and waning numbers of bees - with the worst affected populations declining by a third. The study has grabbed the headlines because of its scope - 18 years' worth of observations in the countryside. But how much is the link a cause for concern? Researchers Ben Woodcock and Nick Isaac of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology discuss the results. Nestled in the Vale of Pewsey, Marden Henge is an artificial mound considered by archaeologists to be one of the best of the area's neolithic monuments. It represents the missing link between the stone circles at Stone Henge and Avebury. Teams from Reading, Historic England, and other volunteers, have been digging there this summer. Roland Pease has been along to meet them. And we've the next nomination in this year's Royal Society Science Book prize shortlist: Tim Birkhead's new book, The Most Perfect Thing, all about bird eggs. It covers how they are made, why they are the shape they are, where their patterns come from and much more. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

New results have squashed the hope that the hints of a new particle detected by the Large Hadron Collider would confirm the existence of something extremely exotic, such as a new Higgs, or even the theoretical Graviton. Instead, the intriguing data 'bump' turns out to be nothing more than a statistical fluctuation. Physicist Jonathan Butterworth of UCL discusses whether this false alarm affects the LHC's chances of finding something else. Crows, ravens and other members of the bird family we call Corvids are well known to have sophisticated skills in tool use and problem solving. Research out this week reports ravens bending wire to help forage for their food. But what constitutes intelligence in bird brains? Adam Rutherford visits the Tower of London where ravens have been permanent residents since the 16th Century, and so quite a good spot for scientists to go and put bird brains to the test. He meets Sophie Hamnett and Nathan Emery from Queen Mary, University of London. Animals evolved in the seas, but by about 400 million years ago, some fishy creatures had evolved to begin walking on terra firma. Nowadays we look at creatures like mudskippers, that can swim and wade, to see how those first crawlers might have crept up the beach. A new study has gone one step further: Jonathan Webb went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta to meet the robot mudskippers. We're profiling each of the shortlisted books for the Royal Society book prize this year, and this week it is the turn of oncologist Siddartha Muhkerjee. He has turned his attention to trying to understand the root of all cancers, and the mental health issues his own family endure. His new book, The Gene, details the central concept in inheritance. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

What should we be looking for when searching for life on other planets beyond our solar system? Scientists urgently need to come to a consensus on this as a new suite of telescopes soon begins detecting. The space agency NASA has put together a virtual institute called The Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, and they've just met to work out how we should be looking for bio signatures - on the burgeoning catalogue of worlds beyond the Solar System. Adam Rutherford hears from Sarah Rugheimer, an astrobiologist from the University of St Andrews, on why the world's astrobiologists have decided to lay down the law. The Royal Society Insight Investment Book Prize celebrates some of the best science published each year. Today the judges announced their shortlist: The Cure by Jo Marchant; The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee; The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson; The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf; The Most Perfect Thing by Tim Birkhead; The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton. We're talking to all the authors over the next 6 weeks before the winner is announced on the 19th of September. The first is Oliver Morton's The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World. Bee hives have evolved to have a complex, fascinating social hierarchy, and although we know about Royal Jelly and pheromones, how exactly does the queen bee control the fertility of the rest of the hive? A team of New Zealand geneticists, Peter Dearden and Elizabeth Duncan, has finally worked it out. This Saturday's evening BBC Prom is set in space. The National Youth Orchestra performs The Planets by Holst, and Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. But the concert begins with a piece inspired by this year's detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Gravitational Waves composer Iris Ter Schiphorst discusses how she went galactic. Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

Since the epic flyby of Pluto in July, NASA has been regularly downloading staggering images from the New Horizons mission. Pluto is not a dead rock, but a geologically active dwarf planet, with tectonic movements, ice plains, glaciers, dunes and cryo-volcanoes. For an end of year update on the observations and outstanding mysteries, Adam meets Alan Stern, the Principal Investigator on New Horizons, who is still marvelling at the success of this humble craft. Scientists have discovered how a potentially useful predatory bacterium called Bdellovibrio protects itself against its own weapons when it invades other bacteria. Professor Liz Sockett discusses how the work offers insights into early steps in the evolution of bacterial predators and how this will help to inform new ways to fight antimicrobial resistance Science stops for no one .So how are researchers nurturing their experiments over the festive period? Marnie Chesterton has gone on the hunt for scientists for whom Christmas Day will be yet another day in the lab. This year there's has been an explosion of papers of using DNA to reconstruct human history. We've invented new techniques for extracting DNA from the long dead, and for analysing ancient genomes. Professor Matthew Cobb from the University of Manchester assesses recent key developments in reconstructing the lives and population structures of ancient civilisations. Producer Adrian Washbourne

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.

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 week A 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 activity For 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.

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 evidence As 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.

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.

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.

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 up In 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 puzzle NASA'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.

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 UK How 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 public Adam 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.

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 study Earlier 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 meeting At 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.

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 characteristics In 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.

As our skies become more crowded Jack Stewart examines the long awaited modernisation of air traffic control. With traffic predicted to reach 17 million by 2030 more flights will mean more delays. For many a new approach to controlling flights is long overdue since aircraft still follow old and often indirect routes around the globe, communication between the ground and air is still by VHF radio, and any flexibility is heavily constrained by a fragmented airspace operated by many national authorities. Jack Stewart examines how aviation technologists have come up with a radical solution: it enables pilots once airborne, to choose their own route. "Free Routing ", it's argued, will allow more direct flights, no planes to be caught up in holding patterns, reduced fuel emissions and flights departing and arriving on time. Crucially, free routing will enable a tripling of flights than currently we're capable of controlling. But will the ability of pilots to choose their own routes increase the risk of collision? Researchers argue it will in fact produce even safer skies. Jack Stewart visits NATS air traffic control centre that annually looks after the safety of over 2 million over British airspace to hear how such a system could evolve. Jack finds out how free routing could work from the engineers at Indra UK - who're trialling such a system in airspace controlled by the NATS Prestwick air traffic control centre. In a new approach they're turning "reactive" air traffic control into a more strategic approach with computer designed flight trajectories utilizing much of the currently underused satellite navigation that is fitted on modern aircraft. It will enable aircraft to be safely spaced closer together and at the same time predict potential "conflicts" of spacing much further ahead of the routes being taken, leaving less room for human error. And as automation begins to play a greater role in all aspects of flight planning and control is the era of pilotless planes moving a step closer? Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Professor Kathy Willis, director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, with the final episodes of her new history of our changing relationship with plants Kathy Willis examines how the technology that helped map whole genomes in plants and animals was to revolutionise the classification of flowering plants; the evolution of our rainforests as revealed by DNA fingerprinting; plants as essential regulators of our planet's atmospheric carbon and water cycles; how green spaces and ecosystems have a positive effect on our health and well being; the future role of plants as providers of food to feed the planet's growing population. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Prof Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, with the omnibus edition of her history of our changing relationship with plants during the 19th century. She examines the race to tame and culture the prized Amazonian water lily which played out in glare of the nations' new greenhouses; the smuggling of rubber seeds out of Brazil to establish a rubber industry in the British colonies; how a growing passion for orchids opened a new episode in cultivating exotic plants for all; the threat posed by the rise of invasive species; and how a new precision in understanding the behaviour of hybrids led to the birth of modern genetics at the close of the 19th century. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Prof Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, with the omnibus edition of her history of our changing relationship with plants during the early 20th century. Kathy Willis examines how the complete picture of photosynthesis led to new opportunities to manipulate plant growth; the ability of plants to exhibit multiple forms that shed light on why flowering plants evolved so quickly; the legacy of tree diseases during the 20th century; the hunt for wild ancestors of our domestic crops in order to maintain resilience within our future food supplies; and botanical medicines and the hunt for new medicinal cocktails at home and abroad. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Prof Kathy Willis, Director of Science at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, with an omnibus edition of her history of our changing relationship with plants from the early 20th century. She examines new insights into plant hormones during the first few decades of the 20th century, the manipulation of which underpinned the perceived success of the so called Green Revolution; unlocking biodiversity through the creation of plant flora encyclopaedias - and their influence in conservation; the surprising benefits to emerge from the devastation wreaked by the great storm of 1987; what can be gained by preserving the diversity of plants through seed banking; the legacy of Arabidopsis - the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

In 2005 a landmark study was published which changed the political landscape for conservation, probably for ever. Rather than viewing biodiversity as something to be conserved for conservation's sake, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment started to assess the contributions that biodiversity makes to human livelihoods and well-being. These include regulating services ( such as modulating climate), cultural services (the spiritual, educational and recreational value) and provisioning services (the biodiversity that provides food, fresh water, and fuel). Professor Kathy Willis examines the first of these new approaches to biodiversity conservation by firstly assessing the role plants play in regulating our atmospheric carbon dioxide. She talks to Yadvinder Mahli on the importance of trees in drawing down and capturing carbon and on new understandings in where the effect is most apparent on our planet. But how we view ecosystems at the landscape scale is equally important if plants are to flourish in this capacity and recent reduction in vital plant pollination services are proving to be poorly understood . But as Kathy Willis hears from chemistry ecologist Phil Stevenson, one of several approaches in improving the memory of bees that account for 30% of plant pollination could have a dramatic and significant effect in securing this vital function. Producer: Adrian Washbourne.

At a glance, Arabidopsis thaliana (Mouse ear cress) looks little more than a tiny flowering weed. But this nondescript plant became a Rosetta stone for understanding the molecular processes underpinning many plant traits when in 2000 it became the first plant to have its genome fully sequenced. Professor Kathy Willis hears how Arabidopsis bagged the role in plant genetics research similar to that played by mice and fruit flies in animal research, and how amidst arguments for and against the technique of modification, it became a key to introducing new characteristics in a quicker and more targeted way than traditional plant breeding. The overall size of the Arabidopsis genome however, is not typical of many plants. We hear how a new understanding of the surprisingly diverse range of genome sizes within the plant kingdom is shedding light on the speed of a plant's ability to reproduce and adapt in changing conditions, which could play a fundamental role in decoding the patterns of plant distribution we see around the world. With contributions from historian Jim Endersby, plant scientist Prof Liam Dolan and cytogeneticist Ilia Leitch. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

By the end of the 20th century, concerns raised in the 1992 Rio Earth Summit about the fate of wild plants and their ecosystems meant that conservation in the field now needed to be complemented by methods away from a plant's natural habitat. Professor Kathy Willis pays a visit to the underground vaults of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP), one in a network of 1300 seed banks around the world - and one of the main "ex situ" methods for conserving plant genetic material. Knowing the longevity and quality of seeds is vital if they're to be put to good use in the real world. We hear a testament to the length of seed survival as head of the MSBP reveals recent success in germinating a 200 year old packet of seeds collected from the Dutch East India Company Gardens in South Africa. And Kathy Willis discovers how research into variable climates during crop cycles on seed quality is providing new leads into which varieties of crops seeds to store, to ensure future sustainable food supplies. With contributions from seed morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy, MSB seed manager Janet Terry, Paul Smith head of the MSBP, and Hugh Pritchard head of MSBP seed conservation. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

During the early hours of October 16th 1987, hurricane force winds ripped through southern England recording gusts of 110 mph. In just a few hours 15 million trees across the country were felled. Dawn revealed over 700 of Kew's trees sprawled on their sides, their root systems spread in the cool calm air after the storm. Kathy Willis explores how one Kew oak tree - the Turner Oak - that didn't fall, helped transform the understanding of tree planting, arboreal care and provided insights into why trees stay upright. She takes a walk with arborealist Tony Kirkham around Kew Gardens to learn how this natural clearout gave a once in a generation chance to rethink Kew's arboreal canvas. It also created an opportunity for the first-ever comprehensive tree root survey, which has since transformed our approach to tree planting and long-term care that's now finding its way into horticultural practices today. Producer: Adrian Washbourne

When in 1934 botanist Kenneth Thimann isolated the plant hormone auxin, he put an end to one of the great botanical mysteries - how plants move and respond to their surroundings. For decades plant scientists had been mystified as to how plants, without any apparent nervous system, bent towards light, flowered at the right time of year, or grew away from other plants. Professor Kathy Willis hears from historian Jim Endersby on how the discovery of plant hormones was the culmination of a journey that had involved Charles Darwin and a series of probing experiments published in his book "The Power of Movement in Plants". They discuss how new technologies enabled successful isolation of what we now have come to recognise as a suite of hormones regulating a whole series of plant responses from stem growth to fruiting. We hear how another hormone during the 1950s went on to steal the limelight - gibberellin whose discovery owes much to Japanese rice crops that grew so tall they would simply fall over, rendering them useless. The race to harness the power of gibberellin would lead to dwarf varieties of key crops that transformed global production in what became known as the Green Revolution. Professor Nick Harberd, a plant geneticist at Oxford University, has been researching the molecular basis of plants' response to this powerful hormone and he sheds light on developing crops suitable for harsher environments in future. Producer: Adrian Washbourne

In 1947 Sir Robert Robinson received the Nobel prize for Chemistry "in recognition of his investigations of plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids". This powerful family of plant chemicals was proving a potent medical tool. Professor Kathy Willis traces the natural role of alkaloids in plants and the first attempts to isolate one of the best know - quinine, from chinchona bark growing in the Andes. This development gave rise to the emergence of a new kind of laboratory scientist equally able to handle botanical and chemical data. As Mark Nesbitt, Keeper of Kew's Economic Botany Collection explains, this was to eliminate the chance and guesswork in identifying "good" plants from "bad". Professor Monique Simmons of Kew's Jodrell Laboratory, assesses why chemicals from the plant kingdom are still needed in the fight against some of our most challenging diseases, from breast cancer to cardiovascular disease, and how making the nuanced connections between plant species is central to success in this field. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Agriculture tends to favour the best food varieties but this is often a trade off with beneficial traits such as resistance to disease or tolerance to drought. During the 1920s the Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov, having witnessed famine on a large scale, became increasingly concerned about the potential loss of locally adapted varieties and spent his life studying crop plants in their wild habitats. Professor Kathy Willis examines Vavilov's pioneering work and his search for pools of genetic variability - so called "centres of origin" amongst the wild relatives of our domesticated crops that could help sustain future plant breeding for human use. Vavilov's story has a tragic end but, as we hear, his legacy lives on in seedbanks such as Kew's Millennium Seedbank at Wakehurst Place whose Crop Wild Relatives Project is collecting and assessing new potential amongst the original progenitors of our domestic crops. With contributions from archaeobotanist Dorian Fuller, Kew's curator of economic botany Mark Nesbitt, Crop Wild Relatives Project coordinator Ruth Eastwood, and head of the Millennium Seedbank Paul Smith. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

By the end of the First World War the mysterious sudden death of elms was a common sight across Belgium and the Netherlands. Dutch researchers managed to elucidate the real culprit amidst rumours of drought or wartime gas poisoning. It was a fungus thought to originate from America, carried by a beetle and the disease rather unfairly gained its name Dutch elm disease. Diagnosis produced no cure and it soon advanced across the channel to Britain. Professor Kathy Willis talks to the head of Kew's arboretum, Tony Kirkham, on the disease's impact amidst complacency, and how the emergence of a vigorous new fungal strain was to completely transform the landscape during its peak in the 1970's. Now that the principle replacement for lost elms, ash, itself has fallen victim to the latest disease to hitch a ride on incoming nursery stock, Paul Smith, Head of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, explains why this new disease could be easier to control. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

In 1903 a cluster of evening primrose in an abandoned potato field outside the Dutch town of Hilversum caught the eye of German botanist Hugo de Vries. Its huge blooms and large leaves appeared to suggest the sudden development of a new species. Around the same time in Kew Gardens a mysterious primula hybrid appeared. The new discipline of plant genetics soon revealed that this curious trick was being driven by multiplication of chromosomes inside the plant cell nucleus. Professor Kathy Willis examines this phenomenon - known as polyploidy ( "multiple forms") - and how insights into this peculiarity can contribute to the evolutionary success of plants. It may also hold the answer to one of the botanical world's greatest mysteries - why so soon after appearing in the fossil record did the flowering plants suddenly explode into the bewildering range of species we see today. With contributions from historian Jim Endersby, Keeper of Kew's Jodrell Lab Mark Chase, and Jodrell Laboratory geneticist Illia Leitch. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

The Nobel prize for Chemistry was awarded to German scientist Richard Willstatter in 1915 for his analysis of the green plant pigment chlorophyll. It marked a significant moment in the long history of piecing together the many elements that contribute to photosynthesis - the process by which plants draw in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and together with light and water can generate their own glucose and release oxygen back into the air. The limits of this process were now clear Kathy Willis hears from historian Jim Endersby about defining moments in photosynthesis' long history and from Kew's Head of Conservation Biotechnology about how artificially elevating levels of carbon dioxide in the air,a technique long developed by horticulturists to produce bigger fruit and vegetable crops, is now having dramatic effects on successful reintroduction of cultivated endangered plants back into the wild. And as scientists understand the different methods that plants use to photosynthesise, Kathy Willis hears from Oxford plant scientist Jane Langdale who's part of a network of international scientists who are attempting to mend a fundamental flaw in the process of photosynthesis which could improve future rice yields by 50% Producer Adrian Washbourne.

In 1900 three papers by three botanists, unknown to each other, appeared in the same scientific journal. Each had independently "rediscovered" the rules of inheritance that Gregor Mendel had found four decades earlier in his solitary investigations of pea plants. Kathy Willis reassesses Mendel's famous pea experiments in the light of his attempts to uncover what happens over several generations when hybrid plants are created. As historian Jim Endersby explains, Mendel's initial results may have stunned him and shown what plant breeders might have suspected for decades, but science now had mathematical laws to create new varieties. Historian Greg Radick sheds light on how Mendelism, in the years leading up to the First World War, became heavily promoted by Cambridge botanist William Bateson and was put into action by the first Professor of Agricultural Botany, Roland Biffen. His success in creating new wheat hybrids is explained by a unique international assembly of wheat ears from the early 1900s, curated by Mark Nesbitt, Head of Kew's economic botany collection. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

The Victorians' pride at the effortless movement of plants around the world during the late 19th century was having an unwelcome side effect. Invasive species were beginning to wipe out native populations of plants. With no natural predators to control them, one man's flower was turning into another man's weed. Prof Kathy Willis hears how during the late 1800s, many invasive species from Japanese knot weed to Himalayan balsam to water hyacinth came from deliberate introductions and asks if today, trying to control them is ultimately futile? As historian Jim Endersby explains both Charles Darwin and Kew's director Joseph Hooker were the first to examine the impact of invasives, having noticed on the island of St Helena and Ascension Island the effect on native plants. One of the current biggest invaders is lantana, familiar to British gardeners as a small pot plant. As Shonil Baghwat of the Open University reveals, since its introduction to Kolkata Botanical garden in the 1870s it decimated native teak plantations. But today opportunities exist to exploit its presence for the wood, basketry and paper industries. And Kathy Willis hears from Kew conservationist Colin Clubbe on the extent to which we should view invasive plants in our ecosystems as part of a strategy to maintain resilience to environmental change in the future. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Orchids are big business. Today over £5m of orchid hybrids are imported as cut flowers into the UK each year. For the Victorians orchids were the chosen ornaments of royalty and captured the 19th century fascination with scientific oddity and imperial conquest. Prof Kathy Willis explores how orchids, one of the planet's most diverse family of plants, mesmerised Victorian devotees and became not only trophy plants of the rich but also a scientific tool to promote a new theory of evolution. The study of orchids also paved the way for cultivation of exotics for all. Lara Jewitt tours the orchid glasshouses at Kew where over 3000 species are cultivated, and explains the biology unique to orchids that fuels interest for both scientists and plant lovers. Darwin was fascinated with these rare and precious plants. Their unique pollination mechanisms helped back up his new evolutionary theory based upon natural selection. As historian Jim Endersby reveals, the delicate orchid was to play a part in getting botany a seat at the top table of scientific respectability. Even in the 1850s, Kew's director Joseph Hooker had expressed concern about the damage orchid hunters were inflicting on the wild population. Whilst today many species remain endangered, V Sarasan, head of Kew's Conservation Biotechnology Unit, reveals how new conservation efforts in some of the most orchid species-rich areas of Madagascar are helping to successfully reintroduce endangered members of this vast but vulnerable flowering family back into the wild. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Natural rubber derived from latex had long been a curiosity. When Nelson Goodyear perfected his method of vulcanisation of rubber and showcased its applications at the Great Exhibition of 1851 the possibilities now seemed endless. But by 1860 demand was outstripping supply from Brazil. Kathy Willis examines how Kew was charged with getting seeds of this economically vital plant out of South America to germinate at Kew Gardens, and then to send seedlings off to cultivate in far flung reaches of the Empire. The historian Emma Reisz explains how Kew acted as the international clearing house for smuggled seeds out of Brazil. Historian Jim Endersby sheds light on why Kew put its faith in one man: Henry Wickham, a travelling plant hunter with dubious botanical credentials. We hear from Mark Nesbitt, curator of Kew's economic botany collection, on how, despite rubber being recognised as an economically essential plant for the British Empire's economy, the whole business of transporting and nurturing the seedlings turned out to be a comically hit and miss affair. Producer Adrian Washbourne.

To the Victorians the Amazonian water lily was more than just a plant. The adventure of finding this exotic piece of the Empire and getting it to grow on home soil involved horticultural ambition, scientific vision and fierce competition amongst the country's wealthy landowners. Prof Kathy Willis hears about the race during the 1840s between Kew's director William Hooker and the Duke of Derbyshire's gardener Joseph Paxton to get the aquatic lily to flower. Historian and biographer Kate Colquhoun examines how the plant's exacting requirements demanded an entirely new approach to horticultural architecture, engineering and management of water and heat. Lara Jewett, manager of Kew's tropical house, and Greg Redwood, head of Kew's glasshouses, explain why this voracious feeder and aquatic beauty still proves a challenge to cultivate today. But botanists were quick to make the connection between repeating modular-like structures on the underside of the lily's leaf and the possibilities of new engineering design, which as Jim Endersby explains, was to inspire the use of essential giant greenhouses to cultivate food in soot laden cities, and for Joseph Paxton to ultimately create the greatest glasshouse ever built - Crystal Palace. Producer Adrian Washbourne.