BBC Inside Science Folgen

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

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

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