Making the UK's dams safe, AI spots fake smiles, How many trees should we be planting?

Calorie restriction Careful restriction of the number of calories eaten, without causing malnutrition, extends the lifespan of numerous organisms – from worms to mice – but whether it works in monkeys is controversial. Building on results from a long-running primate experiment, a team at the University of Wisconsin show a reduction in mortality, in response to caloric restriction. So there seem to be some benefits, but Tracey Logan asks if this can be applied to humans? And would we want to live longer on a tightly controlled diet?Dating the Moon New work by planetary scientists from France, Germany and the USA, has given the most accurate date yet for the birth of the moon. The Moon is believed to have formed out of debris from a massive collision with another Mars-sized planet. The date of this event has always been controversial as radioactive decay readings have produced wildly different results. But this clock uses a different approach, and rules out an early-forming moon. The later the moon formed, the less time for life to evolve.Mars Yard In 2016 Europe launches a mission to mars. ESA’s robotic rover will land on Mars in 2019, and in the meantime, needs to practice. To test it, scientists have recreated the surface of Mars, with 300 tonnes of sand. Reporter Sue Nelson went to Stevenage to play in the sandpit, for science.IPCC This week sees the most recent report from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. And the message is the same: the climate is changing as we continue to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Should we concentrate on adapting to climate change, rather than stopping it? Professor of Coastal Engineering at Southampton University, Robert Nicholls and Dr Rachel Warren of the UEA’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research discuss adaptation plans.Producer: Fiona Roberts

3 Huhti 201427min

School Report on Fracking This week, Inside Science is taken over by BBC School Reporters and Melissa Hogenboom eavesdrops on a school in Lancashire, preparing their report on fracking. They discuss the issues very local to them, as well as the wider international angles and how best to present the story.Purple GM tomatoes The chemical that gives blackberries, blackcurrants, blueberries and some red grape varieties their distinctive purple colour is Anthocyanin. It’s been shown to have some possible anti-cancer properties as well as some protection against cardiovascular disease. So scientists at the John Innes Centre have inserted the ‘purple gene’ into tomatoes to try and boost their health-giving properties. This step is relatively easy, compared to navigating the rules and regulations of getting to the stage of producing purple ketchup. Gareth Mitchell asks the School reporters what they think about Genetic Modification of food crops.Artificial humans With progress in 3D printing of organs, brain-machine interfaces and even artificial skin. Materials scientist at University College London, Professor Mark Miodownik, thinks that the future really could be bionic. Would the School Reporters want to become half human, half machine? And would these technological advances just be used for repairing people who have been injured or really need it, or will it mean that those with enough money could enhance themselves to superhuman states? Shark Attacks Potentially dangerous sharks are being culled off the coast of Western Australia. The government claim it’s as a result of a rise in the number of deaths by shark attack. Many people are outraged by the killings. Shark attacks are still really rare compared to car accidents or even deaths from bee stings – so do the School Reporters think this is a good idea? Or do they think listening to what the scientists studying shark behaviour and developing shark deterrents say, is a better way to go?

27 Maalis 201428min

Cosmic Inflation and Gravity waves Scientists in the BICEP 2 Group say they've found the earliest rumbles of the Big Bang. Theory predicts how the universe first expanded. Now we have the first observation of the phenomenon behind it. The universe was kick-started by a so called 'inflation' - vigorous growth within a fraction of a second of the Big Bang going bang. To confirm inflation you need to detect ripples in the fabric of space called gravitational waves. And to find those, you need to look for twists and kinks in this stuff. The BICEP 2 radio telescope, at the South Pole, has been measuring the direction of twists of light from the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - which is a form of primordial light, a remnant of the Big Bang. The signals have been released that show distortions in that light that can only have been caused by gravitational waves. They could only be there if there was inflation. In other words, these observations have shored up one of the most important theories in cosmology. Gareth Mitchell discusses what this means with BBC Science Correspondent Jonathan Amos and Astronomer at UCL Dr. Hiranya Peiris.Photonic Radar As the search closes in on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370, radar technology has been in the spotlight. At the same time, new research published in this week's Nature journal reports on field trials of the next generation of radars - photonics based. Lead-author Paolo Ghelfi, from the National Laboratory of Photonics networks in Pisa, Italy explains their methods. Professor David Stupples, a radar expert from City University, London, explain that this cheaper, more accurate technology could end up in your car.Show Us Your Instrument - Infrared camera Infrared cameras detect heat, and process this as a colourful image. Dominic McCafferty, from Glasgow University, uses this kit to study stress levels in birds. When an animal is stressed, blood is drawn away from its skin and routed to the essential organs. This 'fight or flight' reflex means the temperature of certain parts of the animal drops. The infrared camera measures this, providing a non-invasive way of testing an animal's stress level. Current projects include one to test chickens, aiming to improve their welfare.Water research When listener Dave Conway emailed in to ask about what research is being done on water, if any - we went straight to materials scientist Professor Mark Miodownik at UCL to find out.Taxidermy Is taxidermy a dying art? Not for the chattering classes of New York apparently. There's been a rise in demand for people to attend classes where they learn to stuff and mount animals, and often dress them up in costumes. But what is the value of the stuffed animals in museums? In the multimedia age of interactive displays, 3D printing and computer models - do we still need the stuffed and stitched creatures in glass cases?Producer: Fiona Roberts.

20 Maalis 201428min

Are black boxes outdated technology? With GPS widely available in everyday gadgets like mobile phones, how could Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 just disappear? Adam Rutherford speaks to Dr Matt Greaves, a Lecturer in Accident Investigation at Cranfield University, about how we track aircraft.Earlier this year, a new study from Japan announced a curiously easy way to make stem cells, by placing them in a mild acid bath. It seemed too good to be true, and according to recent critics, it is. One of the authors has declared that the paper should be withdrawn, that he has 'lost faith in it'.Ivan Oransky runs the site RetractionWatch, dedicated to scrutinizing irregular research. He talks to Adam about the value of post-publication peer review, and public scrutiny of science on the internet.A 30,000 year old killer, buried 100 feet under the Siberian permafrost, has risen from the dead. It's a mega virus, with the largest genome of any known virus, and, happily, only infects amoebae. Virologist Professor Jonathan Ball, of the University of Nottingham, explains the implications of reanimating dead viruses.And actual spaceman, retired NASA pilot Captain Jon McBride, came into the studio to share his out-of-this-world memories and prediction that the next generation of astronauts will be chosen on brains not brawn.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

13 Maalis 201428min

Chemical weapons Disposing of Syria's chemical weapons is a difficult task, both politically and technically. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), responsible for the decommissioning, has kitted out a special ship, the MV Cape Ray to hydrolyse "priority" toxic substances. Hamish de Bretton Gordon, a chemical weapons expert from SecureBio, explains why destroying chemical precursors on dry land is not an option and whether the job will be done on time.Tracking turtles Satellite tags have finally given researchers insight into the "lost years" of loggerhead turtles. After many failed attempts, researchers have worked out how to attach the tiny tags to the months-old animals during the uncertain period when they leave US coastal waters and head out into the Atlantic Ocean. The data suggests the loggerheads can spend some time living in amongst floating mats of Sargassum seaweed, in the Sargasso Sea.Technology for Nature The tools and gadgets available to remotely track animals and monitor populations and their habitats are getting better and more mechanised. Cameras mounted on birds can record where they fly; audio recordings capture bat calls; satellite images monitoring habitat change. However all this digital data needs to be analysed. Professor Kate Jones, an expert on biodiversity at University College London, thinks that this is where more technological advances are needed. She wants image recognition programmes to scan through millions of remote camera images, or sound recognition of hundreds of thousands of bat calls to be developed.Climate The recent extreme rainfall has left many asking, is this weather linked to climate change? A new project 'weather@home' 2014, aims to use a large citizen science experiment to answer this question. Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystems Science at the School of Geography and the Environment, and Dr Nathalie Schaller, both of Oxford University, explain that they aim to run two sets of weather simulations. One will represent conditions and "possible weather" in the winter 2014, and the second will represent the weather in a "world that might have been" if human behaviour had not changed the composition of the atmosphere through greenhouse gas emissions. By comparing the numbers of extreme rainfall events in the two ensembles, 'Weather@Home' will work out if the risk of a wet winter has increased, decreased or been unaffected by human influence on climate.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

6 Maalis 201428min

Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis is one of the world's leading researchers into using the mind to control machines. He is involved in the "Walk Again Project" which aims to build a suit that a paraplegic person can wear and control so that he or she can kick a football at the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Adam is joined by biomedical engineer, Professor Christopher James from Warwick University, who puts the field of Brain Machine Interfaces in context.Work published last week by Professor Ziv Williams looks at the possibility of rewiring the body. Paralysis is normally confined to spinal cord damage, not the limbs themselves. Ziv Williams' work aims to use implanted chips to bypass the injury and have the individual control their own paralysed arms.Listeners ask if there is a gene for fundamentalist intolerance. We put the question to Professor Tim Spector, author of Identically Different.Adam Rutherford heads down to the psychology department at London's South Bank University... for a pint. Dr Tony Moss has built a fake pub, complete with lighting, music and even a fruit machine, to make drinkers feel that they are in a real bar. He says the venue treads a middle ground between a sterile lab, and an actual pub, where there are too many variables to reliably study behaviour.Professor John Shepherd from Cardiff studies alcohol and behaviour from the other end - the drunken nights out that end up in A&E. A few simple initiatives have helped reduce violence levels by 40%Producer: Fiona Roberts.

27 Helmi 201427min

Bees - Nearly all bees in the UK suffering serious declines. They're mostly threatened by habitat and land-use change. But disease also plays a part. Adam Rutherford talks to Professor Mark Brown about new work he's done looking at the evidence of diseases harboured by honeybees, spilling over into wild bumblebees.Pain and epigenetics - Marnie Chesterton goes to Kings College, London to watch identical twins being tested for pain tolerance. The study is to gain insight into the genetic components of pain perception. One area which is fascinating researchers like Professor Tim Spector is the role of epigenetics in how we process pain. Our epigenome is a system that changes the way our DNA is interpreted. Genes can be dialled up or down, like a dimmer switch, by adding little chemical tags to the DNA. These chemical tags, unlike DNA, are changeable, in response to the changing environment. So could the way we live affect the pain we feel?Whales from Space - More listeners' questions, this time, asking whether surveys using images from satellites to see whales underwater, could be hijacked by whale hunters? Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey has the answer.Genetics of sexual preference - The media is all of a twitter this week over unpublished work recently revealed on research looking for genes related to homosexuality. We hear from Professor Tim Spector on the topic, and Adam talks to Professor Steve Jones about the science.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

20 Helmi 201427min

Whales from Space. Scientists have demonstrated how new satellite technology can be used to count whales, and ultimately estimate their population size. Using Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery, alongside image processing software, they were able to automatically detect and count whales breeding in part of the Golfo Nuevo, Peninsula Valdes in Argentina.The new method could revolutionise how whale population size is estimated. Marine mammals are extremely difficult to count on a large scale and traditional methods are costly, inaccurate and dangerous; several whales researchers have died in light aircraft accidents. How long will the floods last? Is this a trend caused by climate change? Should I turn on the kitchen taps so that house is at least flooded with clean water? We put listeners' flood questions to experts from the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology and the British Geological Survey.The instrument we're shown this week is from JET (Joint European Torus) in Culham,. It's the world's largest 'tokamak' - a type of nuclear fusion reactor. The hope is that in a few decades it could be supplying much of the world's electricity. It works by fusing nuclei of hydrogen together to produce helium and a lot of excess energy. It's the power source of the Universe, as all stars run on fusion energy. But on Earth we have to go to much more extreme conditions to achieve it. Upwards of 100 million degrees Celsius, which is around ten times hotter than the Sun. Joanne Flannagan, shows us her lasers which measure the hot fusion plasma inside JET.CERN wants a new tunnel. The 27km long, Large Hadron Collider in Geneva found evidence of the Higgs boson recently. But if we want to know more about this elusive particle and others that make up our universe, the physicists say they're going to have to go bigger. With a 100km long tunnel, in fact. Talks are afoot as to where and how they will build it. But Lucie asks reporter Roland Pease whether it'll be worth it?The current Discoveries exhibition at Two Temple Place, on the banks of the Thames, brings together treasures from eight University of Cambridge museums, in a beautiful period building, built by Waldorf Astor. The show combines objects from science and arts collections to explore the theme of 'Discoveries'. Curator Professor Nick Thomas gives Lucie Green a tour.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

13 Helmi 201428min