The US has shut down government science with potentially devastating results for American and international science projects. Many individual scientists are banned from talking but Matt Hourihan from the American Association for the Advancement of Science tells Dr Adam Rutherford about the serious consequences of the political squabble.Roland Pease gives the low down on this week's Nobel Prizes including the much anticipated Physics gong for Peter Higgs' for his eponymous boson.Marnie Chesterton reports on the new iCollections at the Natural History Museum where butterflies collected 150 years ago are shedding new light on the changing British climate. And after studies this week linked cardiovascular disease to aircraft noise, Kevin McConway, Professor of Applied Statistics at the Open University quantifies the risks of complex science being distorted by simple headlines.Producer: Fiona Hill.
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BBC Inside Science Folgen
A weekly programme that illuminates the mysteries and challenges the controversies behind the science that's changing our world.
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Folge vom 10.10.2013US shutdown; Nobels; New climate science; Airport heart attack headlines
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Folge vom 03.10.2013Menopause; IPCC; Fracking feedback; Particle accelerator; Zombie chemicalsDr Adam Rutherford and guests explore the scientific mysteries of the menopause after scientists in the US and Japan successfully induced pregnancy in post-menopausal women.Also in the programme, we hear from decision scientist Baruch Fischhoff on the difficulties of trying to communicate uncertainty in science in the wake of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Following on from last week's Fracking report, one listener, Professor Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester, raises his concerns about the consequences of exploiting shale gas for UK carbon emissions.This week's show us your instrument comes from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, where Dan Faircloth tends to the ISIS particle accelerator.
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Folge vom 26.09.2013Fracking FAQs; Fingerprint feedback; Lipstick forensics; Snake hookFracking is touted as a technology that will lower UK energy bills. It's a controversial technique which unlocks natural gas from shale rock. But it raises many environmental concerns. So what does the science say? Adam Rutherford sorts science fact from science fiction, putting your frack FAQs to four experts. Reporter Gaia Vince travels to a gas well site in Warrington to discover the various techniques used to extract gas onshore in the UK.Also on the programme, your feedback to last week's story on new fingerprint technology.Lipstick forensics: Professor Michael Went at the University of Kent has developed a new method for unpicking the make-up of make up left at crime scenes.And this week's Show Us Your Instrument comes from Cardiff University, as we showcase herpetologist Dr Rhys Jones's snake hook. It's a low-tech but vital piece of kit for handling snakes. It's also useful for scrumping.
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Folge vom 19.09.2013Chemical weapons; Crowd-sourcing weather; Fingerprint ID; Dino drillAs Syria agrees to destroying its chemical weapon stocks, Adam Rutherford looks at how you solve a problem like Sarin. Dr Joanna Kidd from King's College London gives us a potted history of chemical weaponry. Environmental toxicologist, Prof Alastair Hay, from Leeds University has worked on chemical warfare issues for four decades. In the 1990s, he identified mustard gas and sarin residues from soil samples in Iraq, confirming their use by Saddam Hussein. He talks to Adam about the challenges of destroying chemical weapons in Syria. Reporter Roland Pease looks at a new phone app, OpenSignal, which uses your smartphone's sensors to help improve weather models. Today, London Underground workers are starting to boycott a new clock-in system, which uses their fingerprint for identification. Meanwhile, Apple fans are camping outside stores waiting to buy the new iPhone, which features a fingerprint scanner. Adam talks to Dr Farzin Deravi from the University of Kent about how fingerprint identification works and whether it can be fooled with a gummy bear. Plus he asks technology journalist Kate Bevan if we should worry about the security issues surrounding biometric passwords. Finally this week, Dr Pedro Viegas shows us his instrument - a dino drill. It's being used to uncover the Bristol dinosaur, a 210 million year old Thecodontosaurus.