Science in Action
New developments in science and science news from around the world, weekly from BBC World Service.
14 Episodes
The First Solar Polar Pictures
ESA’s Solar Orbiter camera probe begins raising its orbit towards the sun’s poles, whilst Betelgeuse’s elusive buddy continues to sneak past our best telescopes. Earlier this year, Solar Orbiter started to stretch its orbit over greater latitudes – effectively standing on cosmic tiptoes to catch a glimpse of the Sun’s…
Potential fungal “Agroterror”?
What is Fusarium graminearum and why were scientists allegedly smuggling it into the US? Also, Alpine Glacier collapse and an HIV capitulation. The FBI has accused two Chinese scientists of trying to smuggle a dangerous crop fungus into the US, calling it a potential agro-terrorist threat. But the fungus has…
13 Months To (a chip off) The Moon
China is aiming to join the small club of nations who have successfully returned scientific samples of asteroids for analysis on earth, teaching us more about how our and potentially other solar systems formed. Tianwen-2 launched successfully this week, bound for an asteroid known as Kamo‘oalewa, which sits in a…
WHO Pandemic Agreement reached
This week, 124 countries agreed at the World Health Assembly in Geneva on measures aimed at preventing a future pandemic. The agreement very strongly favours a “One Health” approach, appreciating how so many potential pathogens originate in human-animal interactions. Still to agree on the terms of how to share pathogens…
Vaccinating rabies’ reservoir dogs
In 2015, the World Health Organisation set the goal of eradicating rabies deaths from dog-bites to “Zero by 2030”. A team at the University of Glasgow and colleagues in Tanzania have been assessing the efficacy of dog vaccination schemes for reducing the numbers of human infections over the last 20…
Gain-Of-Function: Loss-Of-Funding
This week, the White House posted an executive order which details the administration’s intent to stop ‘dangerous gain of function research’. We talk to Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and biosecurity expert at Johns Hopkins University who fears the timing and added bureaucracy could stop all sorts of important biosciences unnecessarily,…
Scientists of the world unite.
Science in Action this week comes from the European Geophysical Union general assembly, an annual get-together of scientists to discuss current projects, working hypotheses and potential findings. Nearly 18,000 in attendance this year, there is much to learn. AMOC – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - brings warmth to the…
Wet market SARS CoV-2 origins revisited
Last week, the website covid.gov looked very different, containing information on coping with covid and US research. This week it leads you to a White House webpage outlining lab-leak hypothesis – that the pandemic was the result of dodgy lab work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The scientific consensus…
Any more for Moore’s Law?
After 60 years of doubling computer complexity every two years, can Moore’s law still predict the future power of the devices we use? In 1965, electronics pioneer Gordon Moore was asked to predict the next ten years of progress with the then new-fangled silicon integrated circuits. He estimated, based on…
Painless pain, pelvic evolution, prehistoric seafarers and an Apophis update
Pain, particularly chronic pain, is hard to research. New therapeutics are hard to screen for. Patients are not all the same. Sergui Pascu and colleagues at Stanford university have been growing brain samples from stem cells. Then they began connecting different samples, specialised to represent different brain regions. This week…
Earthquakes and the first breath of life on Earth
How Myanmar’s tragic earthquake left a 500km scar on the surface of the earth in just 90 seconds. Also, more hints of a link between shingles vaccines and reduced dementia, and how earth’s first oxygen breathers seem to have evolved way before there was enough oxygen to breath. Judith Hubbard…
Breakthrough Antivirals and fresh US Grant cancellations
This week, after five years of research, two newly discovered antiviral molecules have been shown to combat coronaviruses. Johan Neyts of the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Leuven outlines how he hopes the new molecule developed by his team might help us deal with emerging pandemics in the future…
Columbia Cuts and "Transgender Mice"
There is continued upheaval in US scientific institutions under the new Trump administration. This week $400 million dollars-worth of grants have been frozen at Columbia University in response to “illegal” protests on the campus. President Trump also recently accused the Biden Administration of spending $8 million dollars on "transgender mice"…
New warnings, familiar faces, and radio pulses
Five years after the WHO pandemic announcement, an H5N1 call to arms from global health leaders. Also, the oldest western European face is found, the oldest impact crater possibly identified, and strange radio signals from space maybe explained. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: US…