Avsnitt
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An apex predator is a killer. Usually large and terrifying, they enjoy the privilege of life at the top of a food chain. Nothing will eat them, leaving them free to wreak carnage on more vulnerable creatures.
In biology, it’s a term normally reserved for animals like polar bears, tigers and wolves. But CrowdScience listener Eoin wonders whether there’s a non-animal candidate for apex predator: the car. After all, worldwide, more than 1.5 million humans die on the roads each year, while pollution from traffic kills millions more. And that’s just the impact on us. What are cars doing to all the other species on this planet?
Host Anand Jagatia hits the road to investigate. En route, we’ll be picking up some scientists to help answer the question. It turns out to be so much more than a question of roadkill: cars, and the infrastructure built to support them, are destroying animals in ways science is only now revealing.
How did the wildlife cross the road? We go verge-side to test four different approaches. And we hear how cars manage to kill, not just on the roadside, but, in the case of some salmon species, from many miles away. Gathering as much evidence as possible, we pass judgement on whether the car truly is an apex predator.
Contributors: Samantha Helle - Conservation Biologist and PhD student, University of Wisconsin–Madison Paul Donald – Senior Scientist, BirdLife International and Honorary Research Fellow, University of Cambridge Zhenyu Tian – Environmental Chemist and Assistant Professor, Northeastern University
Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Marnie Chesterton Reporter: Camilla Mota Editor: Cathy Edwards Studio manager: Donald MacDonald and Giles Aspen Production co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano
(Image: Illustration of a deer in front of a car - stock illustration Credit: JSCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)
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Many of us experience an inner voice: we silently talk to ourselves as we go about our daily lives. CrowdScience listener Fredrick has been wondering about the science behind this interior dialogue. We hear from psychologists researching our inner voice and discover that it’s something that begins in early childhood. Presenter Caroline Steel meets Russell Hurlburt, a pioneering scientist who devised a method of researching this - and volunteers to monitor her own inner speech to figure out what’s going on in her mind. She discovers that speech is just part of what’s going on in our heads, much of our inner world in fact doesn’t involve language at all but includes images, sensations and feelings. Caroline talks to psychologist Charles Fernyhough, who explains one theory for how we develop an interior dialogue as young children: first speaking out loud to ourselves and then learning to keep that conversation going silently. No one really knows how this evolved, but keeping our thoughts quiet may have been a way of staying safe from predators and enemies. Using MRI scanning, Charles and Russell have peered inside people’s brains to understand this interior voice and found something surprising: inner dialogue appears to have more in common with listening than with speaking.
Caroline also has an encounter with a robot that has been programmed to dialogue with itself. Which leads us to some deep questions: is our inner voice part of what makes us human, and if so, what are the consequences of robots developing this ability? Scientist Arianna Pipitone describes it as a step towards artificial consciousness.
Featuring:Professor Charles Fernyhough, University of Durham, UKProfessor Russell Hurlburt, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USADr Arianna Pipitone, University of Palermo, Italy Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Cathy Edwards Sound design: Julian Wharton Studio manager: Donald MacDonaldProduction co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano
(Image: Mixed Race boy looking up Credit: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc via Getty Images)
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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It would be quite a superpower to regrow entire body parts. CrowdScience listener Kelly started pondering this after a discussion with her friend on whether human tongues could regrow. Finding out that they couldn't, she asked us to investigate the extent of human regenerative abilities.
Presenter Alex Lathbridge travels to Vienna, a hotbed of research in this area. He meets an animal with much better powers of regeneration than humans - the axolotl. In Elly Tanaka’s lab he finds out how she studies their incredible abilities – and shows off his new axolotl tattoo.
Why can these sweet-looking salamanders regrow entire limbs while we can’t even regrow our tongues? Palaeontologist Nadia Fröbisch has looked into the evolutionary origins of regeneration, and it goes a lot further back than you might think.
And in fact, even humans are constantly regenerating, by renewing the building blocks of our bodies: cells. New cells grow and replace old ones all the time – although, in some parts of the body, we do keep hold of the same cells throughout our lives.
However, cell turnover isn’t the same as regrowing entire organs or limbs. But can we grow new body parts in the lab instead? We meet Sasha Mendjan, who creates heart organoids using our cells’ innate ability to self-organise. How far off are we from implanting organs, grown from a patient’s stem cells, back into the human body?
Contributors: Dr Elly Tanaka, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) Prof Martin Hetzer, Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) Prof Nadia Fröbisch, Natural History Museum Berlin Dr Sasha Mendjan, Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA)
Presenter: Alex Lathbridge Producer: Florian Bohr Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Bob Nettles
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Why do we have two eyes? Two ears? Two arms and two legs? Why is one side of the human body – externally at least – pretty much a mirror image of the other side?
CrowdScience listener Kevin from Trinidad and Tobago is intrigued. He wants to know why human beings – and indeed most animals - have a line of symmetry in their bodies. Yet, beyond their flowers and fruits, plants don’t seem to have any obvious symmetry. It seems that they can branch in any direction.
Anand Jagatia sets out to find out why the animal kingdom settled on bilateral symmetry as the ideal body plan. And it takes him into the deep oceans of 570 million years ago. Paleobiologist Dr. Frankie Dunn is his guide to a time when animal life was experimenting with all sorts of different body plans and symmetries.
Frankie shows Anand a fossil of the animals which changed everything. When creatures with bilateral symmetry emerged they began to re-engineer their environment, outcompeting everything else and dooming them to extinction.
Well... nearly everything else. One very successful group of animals which have an utterly different symmetry are the echinoderms. That includes animals with pentaradial - or five-fold - symmetry like starfish and sea urchins. And that body shape poses some intriguing questions... like “where’s a starfish’s head?” Dr. Imran Rahman introduces us to the extraordinary, weird world of echinoderms.
To answer the second part of Kevin’s question - why plants don’t seem to have symmetry – Anand turns to botanist Prof. Sophie Nadot. She tells him that there is symmetry in plants... you just have to know where to look! Beyond flowers and fruits, there’s also symmetry in a plants leaves and stem. The overall shape of a plant might start out symmetrical but environmental factors like wind, the direction of the sun and grazing by animals throws it off-kilter.
And, while the human body may be symmetrical on the outside, when you look inside, it’s a very different story. As listener Kevin says, “our internal organs are a bit all over the place!” Prof. Mike Levin studies the mechanisms which control biological asymmetry. He tells Anand why asymmetry is so important... and also why it’s so difficult to achieve consistently.
Contributors: Dr. Frankie Dunn, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, UK Dr. Imran Rahman, Natural History Museum, London, UK Prof. Sophie Nadot, Université Paris-Saclay, France Prof. Mike Levin, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA
Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Jeremy Grange Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Andrew Garratt
(Image: Orange oakleaf butterfly (Kallima inachus) on tropical flower, Credit: Darrell Gulin/The Image Bank via Getty Images)
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It's a simple metal box that moves nearly all of our goods around the world. Designed for uniformity and interchangeability, the shipping container has reshaped global trade and our lives in the nearly 70 years since its creation.
But listener Paul wants to know if these heavy steel containers could be made with lighter materials to cut down on the fuel needed to transport them, especially when they're empty. Could we make shipping containers a more efficient process and reduce the shipping industry’s sizable greenhouse gas emissions?
Host Anand Jagatia travels to Europe's largest port in Rotterdam looking for answers. Speaking to environmental scientists and industry insiders along the way, he takes a look at how the humble container might be modified to once again remake global shipping, from materials, to designs, to how it’s shipped. And thinking outside the box, we explore which innovations might benefit the whole system – from machine learning to new, carbon-free energy sources.
For an industry that’s not always quick to change, we speak with the changemakers trying to disrupt the way 90% of the stuff we buy moves, in hope of a greener future.
Featuring:Maarten van Oosten - Port of Rotterdam AuthorityMarc Levinson - historian, economist and authorGreg Keoleian - School for Environmental Sustainability and Center for Sustainable Systems, University of MichiganHans Broekhuis - Holland Container InnovationsTrine Nielsen, FlexportTristan Smith - University College LondonElianne Wieles – Deep Sea Carriers, Port of Rotterdam
Presenter: Anand JagatiaProducer: Sam BakerEditor: Cathy EdwardsProduction Coordinator: Ishmael SorianoStudio Manager: Steve Greenwood
(Photo: Port of Rotterdam, Maasvlakte Deep Sea Carrier Area. Credit: Sam Baker, BBC)
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When listener Watum heard about the Titan submersible implosion in the news in 2023, a question popped up in his mind: if a machine that we specifically built for this purpose cannot sustain the water pressure of the deep ocean, how do fish survive down there?
In this episode, we travel with marine biologist Alan Jamieson to the second deepest place in our oceans: the Tonga trench. Meanwhile, presenter Caroline Steel speaks to Edie Widder about the creatures that illuminate our oceans, and travels to Copenhagen to take a closer look one of the strangest deep sea creatures and its deep sea adaptations.
But even fish have their limits! Scientist Paul Yancey correctly predicted the deepest point that fish can live, and it all comes down to one particular molecule.
So is there anything living beyond these depths? Well, there is only one way to find out…
Contributors: Prof Alan Jamieson, University of Western Australia Luke Siebermaier, Submersible Team Leader, InkfishDr Edie Widder, Ocean Research & Conservation Association Peter Rask Møller, Natural History Museum of Denmark Prof Paul Yancey, Whitman College
Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Florian Bohr Editor: Martin Smith & Cathy EdwardsProduction Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Steve Greenwood
(Image: Deep-sea fish - stock photo, Credit: superjoseph via Getty Images)
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CrowdScience listener Azeddine from Algeria has had bad handwriting since he was a child. In fact, it was so untidy that, when he later became a chemistry lecturer, his university students complained that they couldn’t read his lecture notes. That was when he decided he had to do something about it. And it got him wondering… why do some of us have very neat handwriting while other people’s is almost unreadable? Why do his sisters all write beautifully when his natural style is quite the opposite? Presenter Alex Lathbridge – who admits that his handwriting isn’t always the tidiest – sets out to answer Azeddine’s question. He explores the different factors which determine how well we write. How much of it is inherited? What part does family and education play? And what’s actually going on in our brains when we apply pen to paper? Alex talks to anthropologist Monika Saini in Delhi who has analysed writing styles within families and in different regions across India. She tells him about the genetic and cultural factors which seem to influence our handwriting. We also hear from neuroscientist Marieke Longcamp who uses MRI scanning to find out which parts of our brains are involved when we write by hand. She’s looked at what’s happening in the brains of people who write in more than one script – for example in French and Arabic, like Azeddine. Another neuroscientist, Karin Harman James, has been looking at the link between learning something by writing it down compared to typing it on a tablet or laptop. And Alex meets handwriting tutor Cherrell Avery to find out if it’s possible to improve your writing – even as an adult. Contributors:Cherrell Avery, Handwriting Tutor, London, UKDr. Monika Saini, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, Delhi, India Prof. Karin Harman James, Indiana University, USAProf. Marieke Longcamp, Aix Marseille Université, France Presenter: Alex LathbridgeProducer: Jeremy GrangeEditor: Cathy EdwardsProduction Co-ordinator: Ishmael SorianoStudio Manager: Emma Harth
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In many languages across the world, all nouns are classed as either male or female, or sometimes neuter. The English language, however, only signals gender in its pronouns - he, she, it or they. For inanimate objects, gender just crops up in occasional examples like ships or countries, which, for some reason, are deemed female. This lack of gender in English intrigued CrowdScience listener Stuart, since the other languages he knows all highlight whether something is male or female. Did English ever have gender, and if so, where did it go? Presenter Anand Jagatia dives into some Old English texts to uncover the idiosyncrasies of its masculine and feminine nouns, and learns why these gradually fell out of use. But why do other languages assign gender to nouns – male, female, and sometimes many more categories too? And does this affect the way we think?
Contributors:Andrew Dunning, Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford UniversityRachel Burns, Departmental Lecturer in Old English, Oxford UniversitySuzanne Romaine, Professor of Linguistics, HawaiiIda Hadjivayanis, Senior Lecturer in Swahili, SOAS UniversityAngeliki Alvanoudi, Sociolinguist, Aristotle University of ThessalonikiAmy Bahulekar, Writer, Mumbai
Presenter: Anand JagatiaProducer: Eloise StevensEditor: Cathy EdwardsProduction Coordinator: Ishmael Soriano
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Buildings inspire many emotions, like awe, serenity or even dread. CrowdScience listener Siobhan was struck by this as she passed a huge apartment block with tiny windows; it reminded her of a prison. So, she asked us to investigate the feelings that buildings can trigger. Architects have long considered how the effect of buildings on their occupants or passersby: asking whether certain features elicit feelings of wonder or joy... or sadness and fear. And now modern neuroscience has started to interrogate these very questions, too. How much of the way we feel about a building is to do with its intrinsic design, and how much is due to our individual brain chemistry and life experiences? Presenter Caroline Steel talks to designer Thomas Heatherwick about his ideas for improving public spaces; enters a virtual reality simulation in Denmark to learn about the emerging field of ‘neuroarchitecture’; and finds out why people just can’t agree what makes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ building.
Contributors:Thomas Heatherwick, Heatherwick Studios, LondonProfessor Zakaria Djeberra, University of AalborgProfessor Lars Fich, University of AalborgProfessor Edward Vessel, City College of New York Presenter: Caroline SteelProducer: Richard WalkerEditor: Cathy EdwardsProduction Coordinator: Ishmael SorianoStudio Manager: Duncan Hannant
(Image: Rear view of woman surrounded by old traditional residential buildings and lost in city, Hong Kong, China. Credit: d3sign via Getty Images)
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How do you think about the internet? What does the word conjure up? Maybe a cloud? Or the flashing router in the corner of your front room? Or this magic power that connects over 5 billion people on all the continents of this planet? We might not think of it at all, beyond whether we can connect our phones to it.
Another chance to hear one of our favourite episodes, inspired by a question from CrowdScience listener Simon: how much does the internet weigh?
First of all, this means deciding what counts as the internet. If it is purely the electrons that form those TikTok videos and cat memes, then you might be surprised to hear that you could easily lift the internet with your little finger. But presenters Caroline Steel and Marnie Chesterton argue that there might be more, which sends them on a journey.
They meet Andrew Blum, the author of the book Tubes – Behind the Scenes at the Internet, about his journey to trace the physical internet. And enlist vital help from cable-loving analyst Lane Burdette at TeleGeography, who maps the internet.
To find those cables under the oceans, they travel to Porthcurno, once an uninhabited valley in rural Cornwall, now home to the Museum of Global Communications thanks to its status as a hub in the modern map of worldwide communications. With the museum’s Susan Heritage-Tilley, they compare original telegraph cables and modern fibre optics.
The team also head to a remote Canadian post office, so correspondent Meral Jamal can intercept folk picking up their satellite internet receivers, and ask to weigh them. A seemingly innocuous question becomes the quest for everything that connects us... and its weight!
Producer: Marnie Chesterton Presenters: Marnie Chesterton & Caroline Steel Editors: Richard Collings & Cathy Edwards Production Coordinators: Jonathan Harris & Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Donald MacDonald
(Image: Blue scales with computer coding terms. Credit: Alengo via Getty Images)
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Snakes are often seen as slithery, slimy and scary. But these intriguing non-legged creatures have made CrowdScience listener Okello from Uganda wonder how they move – more specifically, he wants to know how they climb trees so easily, and so fast.
Presenter Caroline Steel meets snake expert Mark O’Shea to investigate the ingenious methods different snakes use to scale a tree trunk, and gets a demonstration from a very agreeable corn snake at a zoo.
Snake movement isn’t just your typical S-shaped slithering: these reptiles move in a remarkably diverse range of ways. Melissa Miller from the University of Florida explains all the range of motion snakes can employ to effectively travel along the ground as well as at height.
Caroline witnesses this in action as we pay a steamy visit to the Everglades National Park in Florida, USA, tracking pythons across the vast swamps there. We find out why understanding these pythons’ movement is vitally important for conserving the local ecosystem.
Contributors: Dr Melissa Miller, Research Assistant Scientist, University of Florida Brandon Welty, Wildlife Biologist, University of Florida Prof Mark O’Shea MBE, Professor of Herpetology, University of Wolverhampton
Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Hannah Fisher Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Neva Missirian
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The CrowdScience team like a challenge. And listeners Jenny and Kai in the UK have come to us with a big one. They want to know how many flies have ever existed.
Flies first appeared around 270 million years ago, so presenter Caroline Steel prepares herself to calculate a very, very large number indeed. She enlists the help of Dr Erica McAlister, Curator of Flies at the Natural History Museum in London. As Erica introduces her to specimens from the Museum’s collection of over 30 million insects, they start with the basics. Like... how do you define a fly in the first place?
Caroline also explores the incredible diversity of flies… from fast-moving predators like robber flies which catch other insects on the wing to midges which are a vital part of chocolate-production; and from blood-sucking mosquitoes which transmit fatal diseases to the housefly buzzing lazily around a room.
And that leads to another fly-related question. Listener Brendan in Colombia wonders why they always fly in circles around a particular area of his apartment. For an explanation we turn to Prof. Jochen Zeil from the Australian National University who reveals that this apparently aimless behaviour is, in fact, a battle for sex.
And Collin in Barbados has e-mailed to ask how flies and mosquitoes benefit us. He’s had first-hand experience of their negative effects through contracting the disease chikungunya from a mosquito bite so he’s wondering if these insects are anything other than a nuisance. However, passionate fly advocate Erica McAlister is ready with plenty of reasons that we should be extremely grateful for them!
Contributors: Dr Erica McAlister, Natural History Museum, London Dr David Yeates, Director, Australian National Insect Collection Prof. Jochen Zeil, Australian National University Prof. Jo Lines, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Jeremy Grange Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano Studio Manager: Sarah Hockley
(Image: Close-up of insect on leaf, Kageshwori Manohara, Bagmati Province, Nepal. Credit: Aashish Shrestha via Getty Images)
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It’s hard to imagine something as mind-bogglingly small as an atom.
But CrowdScience listener Alan has been attempting to do just that. All things in nature appear to be different and unique; like trees and snowflakes, could it be that no two atoms are ever the same?
Alan isn’t the first person to wonder this. Philosopher and scientist Gottfried Leibnitz had a similar idea in the 17th century; in this episode, philosopher of physics Eleanor Knox helps us unpick the very idea of uniqueness.
And with the help of physicist Andrew Pontzen, presenter Anand Jagatia zooms into the nucleus of an atom in search of answers. Listener Alan has a hunch that the constant movement of electrons means no atom is exactly the same at any given moment in time. Is that hunch right? We discover that the world of tiny subatomic particles is even stranger than it might seem once you get into quantum realms.
Can we pinpoint where uniqueness begins? And if the universe is infinite, is uniqueness even possible?
In the podcast edition of this show, we peer into that expansive universe, as we discover that the quantum world of hydrogen - the tiniest and most abundant of all atoms - allows us to observe galaxies far, far away. Featuring: Dr Eleanor Knox – King’s College LondonProf Andrew Pontzen – University College LondonDr Sarah Blyth – University of Cape TownDr Lucia Marchetti – University of Cape Town
Presented by Anand JagatiaProduced by Florian BohrEditor: Cathy EdwardsProduction Coordinators: Ishmael Soriano and Liz TuohyStudio Manager: Emma Harth
(Photo: Twelve snow crystals photographed under a microscope, circa 1935. Credit: Herbert/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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Listener Julie lives close to the coast in New Zealand and wants to know why the water that washes up on the beach isn't fresh. How exactly does all that salt get into the world's oceans?
In India, a country where salt became symbolic of much more than well-seasoned food, host Chhavi Sachdev visits coastal salt farms and a research institute dedicated to studying all things saline, to better understand our relationship with salty seas.
The team also ventures to a very briny lake on the other side of the globe in Salt Lake City, Utah, to learn how salt makes its way into water bodies.
Speaking to an expert in deep sea exploration, we learn how hydrothermal vents may play a role in regulating ocean saltiness, and how much the field still has to explore.
Meanwhile, listener Will wants to know how much melting ice sheets are affecting ocean salinity. But ice melt isn’t the only thing affecting salt levels when it comes to the impacts of climate change.
And... how many teaspoons of salt are in a kilogram of sea water anyway? We do the rigorous science to answer all these salient saline questions.
Featuring: Deepika - small scale salt farmer Mark Radwin - PhD candidate in geology and geophysics at the University of Utah Brenda Bowen - Geology & Geophysics, Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah Chris German - Geology & Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Prasan Khemka - Chandan Salt Works Paul Durack - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Bhoomi Andharia - Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute
Presenter: Chhavi Sachdev Producer: Sam Baker Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Coordinator: Liz Tuohy Studio Manager: Sarah Hockley
(Photo: Shiv Salt Works, Bhavnagar, Gujarat in India. Credit: Chhavi Sachdev, BBC)
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CrowdScience listener Eleanor was lying in bed one rainy evening, listening to the radio. She lives in New Zealand, but happened to hear a weather forecast that told her it was raining in the UK too.
She started wondering: could it be the same rain falling there and outside her window in New Zealand? Can a raindrop really travel all the way around the world?
There are a number of routes the droplet could take, including traveling as moisture in the air. Presenter Caroline Steel meets meteorologist Kei Yoshimura, who puts his powerful weather simulation to work plotting the raindrop’s journey through the sky.
What if the raindrop falls along the way and gets trapped? Where might it end up? Hydrologist Marc Bierkens talks Caroline through the detours it could take, ranging from short stop-offs in plant stems to extremely long delays in deep groundwater.
Finally, could the drop of water make it to New Zealand by circulating through the world’s ocean currents? Oceanographer Kathy Gunn maps the droplet’s path through the ocean – and explains how climate change might affect its journey.
Featuring: Prof. Kei Yoshimura, Professor of Isotope Meteorology, University of Tokyo Prof. Marc Bierkens, Professor of Earth Surface Hydrology at Utrecht University Dr. Kathy Gunn, Lecturer in Climate Sciences at the University of Southampton
Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Phil Sansom Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Liz Tuohy Studio Manager: Tim HefferAdditional recording: Knut Heinatz
(Photo: Textures of rain on the surface of the ocean. Credit: Philip Thurston/Getty Images)
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It’s often said that fine wine gets better with time, and this week’s oenophile listener Jeremy has a cellar full of dust-covered bottles. He is curious whether chemistry can account for the range of flavours that develop as wine matures, but also wonders why some of it tastes like vinegar if you leave it too long? We head off to the Bordeaux region of France, where vines were planted almost 2,000 years ago. Here, winemakers are joining forces with scientists to better understand wine ageing, a process so subtle and intricate that even the scientists refer to it as magic. In the world-famous vineyards of Chateau Margaux, presenter Marnie Chesterton learns that the key ingredient for good grapes is a sandy soil type; and that in this part of France, the warming climate is actually having a positive effect on the vines, which need very little water to thrive. Over in the lab, we meet the chemist mapping the molecules responsible for aromas associated with a well-aged Bordeaux. Featuring: Philippe Bascaules, Chateau Margaux Prof Cornelis van Leeuwen, Bordeaux Sciences Agro Dr Stephanie Marchand-Marion, ISVV Alexandre Pons, ISVV Presented by Marnie Chesterton Producer – Marijke Peters Editor – Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator – Liz Tuohy Studio Manager – Sarah Hockley
(Photo: Aged bottles on wine racks in a cellar. Credit: Morsa Images/Getty Images)
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The Blue Ridge Parkway is 469 miles of beautiful vistas, a mountainous road that winds from Virginia to North Carolina in the USA. The route is peppered with elevation signs, telling you how many metres above sea level you are. Which has CrowdScience listener Beth wondering: as we are told that sea level is rising, will all the elevation signs need repainting?
It’s a task she’s passed over to the CrowdScience team, who like a difficult challenge. The height of an enormous pile of rock like Ben Nevis, or Mount Everest feels unchangeable. But we measure them relative to the nearest patch of sea, which is where our story becomes complicated. Unlike water in a bath, sea level is not equal around the world. The east coast of America has a different sea level to its west coast. And as host Marnie Chesterton discovers in Finland, in some parts of the world the land is being pushed up, so sea level is actually falling.
In fact, when nothing on earth - not the sea, the shore or the mountains - seems to be stable or constant, the question of what you measure from and to becomes incredibly tricky. But that hasn’t stopped oceanography and geography scientists risking life and fingers to use an ever-evolving array of technologies to find answers. In this show we find out why they care so much, and why we should too.
Featuring: Dr Paul Bell – National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, UK Dr Severine Fournier – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory / California Institute of Technology Dr Jani Särkkä – Finnish Meteorological Institute Khimlal Gautam – Mountaineer and Chief Survey Officer, Government of Nepal Dr Derek van Westrum – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA
Presented and produced by Marnie Chesterton Editor – Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator – Liz Tuohy Studio Manager – Steve Greenwood
(Photo: Sea Level Elevation Sign in Death Valley, California. Credit: Mitch Diamond/Getty Images)
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Prayer and meditation are key features of religious and spiritual practices around the world, suggesting they’re intimately linked to the human condition. But what is going on in the brain during prayer? And is praying beneficial for our mental health?
CrowdScience listener Hilary is keen to find answers to such questions. She’s a counsellor with a strong Christian faith, and is curious to know whether science can illuminate religious and spiritual practices.
Presenter Caroline Steel talks to neuroscientists researching how our brains respond to prayer and meditation; and practices mindfulness herself to explore its similarities to prayer. She discovers that having a relationship with God may depend on more than religious practice. And is there a ‘spiritual part’ to our brains? Or is prayer just one activity among many - like going for a walk or playing music - that can have similar effects on our state of mind?
Featuring: Professor Andrew Newberg, Director of Research Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital, USATessa Watt, mindfulness teacher Ven. Hin Hung Sik, Centre of Buddhist Studies, University of Hong Kong Dr Junling Gao, Centre of Buddhist Studies, University of Hong Kong Dr Blake Victor Kent, Westmont College, USA
Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Cathy Edwards Studio Manager: Tim Heffer Production Co-ordinator: Liz Tuohy
(Photo: A crowd of people praying. Credit: Digital Vision/Getty Images)
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Mosquitoes are responsible for more human deaths than any other animal. These tiny creatures transmit many diseases, but the most devastating is malaria. It kills over half a million people every year, most of them children.
So why are people still dying of malaria in such large numbers, when so much time and money has been invested in trying to eradicate it? What do we know about mosquitoes and malaria, and what do we still need to learn? CrowdScience visits Malawi, one of the African countries leading the way against malaria, with the rollout of the world’s first malaria vaccine programme.
Presenter Caroline Steel is joined by a live audience and a panel of experts: Wongani Nygulu, Eggrey Aisha Kambewa and Steve Gowelo. Together they explore questions from our listeners in Malawi and around the world, like why female mosquitoes feed on blood while males drink nectar; why some people are more likely to be bitten by mosquitoes than others; and how we might modify the insects’ DNA to stop them spreading diseases.
About half a million children across Malawi have been vaccinated since 2019. We visit a clinic in nearby Chikwawa to meet the staff involved in the vaccination programme there, and the mothers embracing the opportunity to protect their babies against this deadly disease.
Recorded at Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLW), Blantyre, Malawi.
Contributors: Dr. Wongani Nygulu, Epidemiologist, Malaria Alert Centre Eggrey Aisha Kambewa, MLW entomologist, MLW Dr. Steve Gowelo, University of California San Francisco Malaria Elimination Initiative
Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Jeremy Grange Researcher: Imaan Moin Additional Recording: Margaret Sessa Hawkins & Sophie Ormiston Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Liz Tuohy
(Photo: A mosquito, that is silhouetted against the moon, bites a human arm. Credit: LWA/Getty Images)
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When CrowdScience listener Israel from Papua New Guinea received a bad grade on a maths test in third grade, he looked around the class and realised that almost all the other students had received a better result. Since then, he has always wondered: why are some people better at maths than others? And Israel isn’t the only one to think about this: our listeners from all over the world describe their relationships with numbers, which run the full gamut from love to hate. So are we all in control of our own mathematical fate, or are some people just naturally bad at it? Presenter Anand Jagatia hears about studies of identical and non-identical twins showing how genetics and environment interact to shape our mathematical abilities. Our numerical abilities are not set in stone. It’s always possible to improve, and getting rid of negative feelings and anxiety around maths could be the key, says psychologist Iro Xenidou-Dervou. Some countries seem to support children’s maths skills better than others. China and Finland both rank highly in international league tables; education experts in both countries discuss whether there are any keys to a successful mathematics education. And there is something underlying our ability to do maths in the first place: our number sense. We hear what happens when this number sense does not work as intended – and what can be done about it. Contributors: Professor Yulia Kovas – Goldsmiths University of London, UK Professor Pekka Räsänen – University of Turku, Finland Assistant Professor Zhenzhen Miao – Jiangxi Normal University, China Dr Iro Xenidou-Dervou – Loughborough University, UK Professor Brian Butterworth – University College London, UK Presented by Anand Jagatia Produced by Florian Bohr Editor: Cathy Edwards Production Co-ordinator: Liz Tuohy Studio Manager: Jackie Margerum
(Photo: Boy scratching head in front of blackboard. Credit: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Getty Images)
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