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

The warning that floods are likely to become more common, or more severe, won't be a high priority for those with homes currently deluged. But it is something architects, engineers and planners have been taking very seriously. Dr. Adam Rutherford finds out about some of the innovations, both in UK and abroad, being designed for homes in areas prone to flooding - from simple door guards and waterproofing which can be retrofitted to existing houses - to entire city re-landscaping, or 'waterscaping' which aims to make room for the river, rather than fighting against it.Last week Adam talked about research showing that most people of European or East Asian descent carry a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA - about 2%. He examined some of the physical characteristics we may have got from the genes of our ancient cousins. This week Inside Science addresses some of the questions this fascinating work prompted.A new study in the journal Neuron this week, looks at what happens in the brain when one of the senses is dulled. Dr. Patrick Kanold, from the University of Maryland in the States, and his colleagues simulated blindness in mice by keeping them in the dark for a week, to see what happened to the parts of their brains involved in hearing. The found that the mouse's hearing improved. We sometimes talk about the brain being 'hardwired': all the neurons locked in place from early childhood. It was assumed that there was only a short, finite period when the brain was still capable of changing, but the new research shows parts of the brain still has room to manoeuvre.A recurring problem in science is that we are far better at collecting vast amounts of scientific data than we are at actually analysing them. To combat this problem, the charity Cancer Research UK have just launched a mobile phone game, 'Genes In Space', that farms statistical analysis out to the masses. Under the guise of flying a spaceship through a meteor storm, game players actually navigate their way through genetic sequence data from breast cancer patients. The information on the virtual path they take is automatically uploaded to the database and fed back into the scientific process.Producer: Fiona Roberts.

6 Helmi 201428min

We now know that Neanderthals and our ancestors interbred over 40,000 years ago. Recent research has shown that most people of European or East Asian descent carry a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA - about 2%. But two new papers this week examine some of the physical characteristics we may have got from the genes of our ancient cousins. They include some disease susceptibilities and hair and skin characteristics, which may have helped our forebears survive in northern climes.There have been many sensationalist headlines in the news this week suggesting that the deadly bubonic plague could return, when really, it never went away. And while it can still be deadly, it can be treated early with antibiotics. In the Middle Ages the Black Death is thought to have killed up to half of the European population and so too did the Justinian Plague 800 years earlier. Now scientists have compared these two plague genomes to find that they were both caused by distinct strains of the same bacterium, Yersinia Pestis. Knowing how the pathogen evolved in the past is crucial to our understanding of possible future strains of plague. Lead author Dr David Wagner from the University of Arizona tells Dr Adam Rutherford that it's very unlikely the plague will return on a mass scale.It's a windy Show Us Your Instrument this week - Prof Konstantinos ('Kostas') Kontis, Professor of Aerospace Engineering shows us around his wind tunnel. It's used to help develop more effective plane wings, helicopter rotors, and wind turbine blades, but cyclist Sir Chris Hoy has also been a test sample. Glasgow University is currently building a hypersonic wind tunnel, which can test air flow at speeds of up to Mach 10.We all unconsciously synchronise our movements and researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown how professional musicians make tiny adjustments in their playing to keep time with their colleagues. Alan Wing, Professor of Human Movement in Psychology tells Adam how this research about minute synchronisation is helping to inform how robots can be designed to interact with humans.Stem cells can become any other cell in the body from nerve to bone to skin, and they are touted as the future of medicine. Embryos are one, often ethically charged, source of stem cells and in 2006 Nobel prize winning research showed that skin cells could be "genetically reprogrammed" to become stem cells. These were called induced pluripotent stem cells. Scientists in Japan have now shown, in mice, that this previous painstaking method of making the versatile cells can be replaced by little more than a short dip in acid. Professor Chris Mason from University College London tells Adam that this major breakthrough could be faster, cheaper and possibly safer than other cell reprogramming technologies.Producer: Fiona Hill.

30 Tammi 201428min

The Higgs boson has been discovered, providing the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle for the Standard Model of particle physics, a description of how the universe works. But what physicists haven't found yet, which they should have, are supersymmetry or SUSY particles. Roland Pease attended a recent meeting of top physicists, and shares with Adam Rutherford the latest discussions about where to look next.The history of neutrinos is littered with interesting characters. It was Wolfgang Pauli who first suggested their existence. Pauli was so unsettled by his proposal that he bet a case of champagne against anyone being able to discover these "pathologically shy" particles. Since then, scientists have built ever more elaborate experiments to try and detect these particles. Ray Jayawardhana, Professor of Astrophysics and author of a new book "The Neutrino Hunters" explains more about the most abundant particle in the universe.This week's Show Us Your Instrument is a tool used to help scientists measure the glaciers in the Antarctic. Julian Dowdeswell, a glaciologist from the University of Cambridge, uses an echo-locator to look at the dynamics of large ice masses and their response to climate change.Fungi, not viewed favourably by gardeners, can be good for rainforest biodiversity. Dr Owen Lewis from Oxford University tells Melissa Hogenboom that plots sprayed with fungicide soon become dominated by a few species at the expense of many others, leading to a marked drop in diversity.A mysterious illness killing dogs has been in the headlines this week. David Walker a veterinary specialist, says that although it's not clear what's causing the disease, people should not panic.

23 Tammi 201428min

For a couple of hundred quid, one of many companies will send you a kit for sampling your own genome, and most will tell you your genetic risk for some diseases. In December the US Food and Drug Administration imposed a ban on one of these companies, 23andme. The reasoning was that if the organisation is offering medical advice, it needs to be medically regulated. Geneticist Professor Robert Green from Harvard Medical School argues that people can cope responsibly with their genetic information and that the FDA is being over-cautious.Most people are familiar with recurrent infections caused by bacteria such as tonsillitis and bladder infections, where you pick up an infection, get treated with antibiotics and then after a few weeks or months the infection reappears and you need another course of antibiotics; this is a problem that can go on for many years, and is a major healthcare burden world-wide. Marnie Chesterton met a team from Imperial College studying the elusive persister cells responsible for these relapses.Earthquakes usually occur in subduction zones, where one tectonic plate plunges beneath another. Now a team at University of Aberdeen has analysed a large earthquake database and developed a global map giving clues to which areas could be capable of causing giant earthquakes. Professor Nicholas Rawlinson explains the difficulties of predicting.The venom of scorpions contains neurotoxins, which attack the nervous system of animals - it's one of the reasons why it's not a good idea to be stung by a scorpion. The structure of these toxins very closely resembles the structure of a group of proteins with a completely different purpose, called defensins. Professor Jan Tytgat from KU Leauven suggests that venom evolved from these defensins.

16 Tammi 201428min

Scientists following in the footsteps of Edwardian explorer, Douglas Mawson, have been trapped in pack ice in the Antarctic. The Chinese vessel that came to their rescue also became "beset" in the ice. The BBC's Andrew Luck Baker talks to Adam Rutherford about the catacylsmic event that caused multi-year ice to break away and trap the Academik Shokalskiy and Professor John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey underlines the importance of differentiating between extreme weather events and the impact of climate change.A team at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire has succeeded in genetically engineering plant seeds to contain the Omega-3 oil usually found in oily fish. Seeds from Camelina sativa (false flax) plants were modified using genes from microalgae - the primary organisms that produce these beneficial fatty acids.The oil has now been incorporated into salmon feed to assess whether it's a viable alternative to wild fish oil. Dr Johnathan Napier tells Melissa Hogenboom that he hopes the plants will provide a sustainable source of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids.From fossils we know an awful lot about the animals that walked on the Earth, swam in the sea and flew in the air. But fossils have never been good at revealing the colour of these animals. With increasingly sophisticated sampling techniques however, scientists are starting to get a much better, technicolour glimpse into these extinct fauna. And it turns out that colour played a much more important role than just camouflage and decoration. Johan Lindgren form Lund University in Sweden has been finding out how the pigment, melanin, allowed ancient marine reptiles to travel all over the oceanic globe.Show Us Your Instrument: Dr Andrew Polaszek, Head of Terrestrial Invertebrates at the Natural History Museum reveals his compound microscope (with Nomarski Differential Interference Contrast) which he uses to discover "hidden biodiversity", particularly in parasitoid wasps.Stephen Hawking threw a party for time travellers and issued the invitation after the event. Astrophysicists after a long poker game decided to use Twitter instead, to flush out the time travellers in our midst. Professor Robert Nemiroff from Michigan Tech University and his students mined social media for references to the Comet ISON and the naming of the new Pope Francis, before both those events had actually happened. Producer: Fiona Hill.

9 Tammi 201427min

The ancient inhabitants of Britain; when did they get here? Who were they? And how do we know? Alice Roberts meets some of the AHOB team, who have been literally digging for answers.The Natural History Museum's Chris Stringer, is the Director of AHOB, the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain, a project which, over the past 12 years, has brought together a large team of palaeontologists, archaeologists, geologists and geographers, to pool their expertise in order to unpick British History.Nick Ashton from the British Museum has been in charge of the north Norfolk site of Happisburgh, where the crumbling coast line has revealed the oldest examples of human life in Britain, 400,000 years earlier than previous findings of human habitation, in Boxgrove in Sussex.The ancient landscape had its share of exotic animals. Hippos have been dug up from Trafalgar Square, mammoths have been excavated from Fleet Street. Professor Danielle Schreve is an expert in ancient mammal fossils, and tells us what these bones reveal about the ancient climate. Less glamorous than the big fossils, the humble vole is so useful and accurate as a dating tool that it has been nicknamed "the Vole Clock."Carbon dating has improved vastly in the past few years. Rob Dinnis, from Edinburgh University, explains why the AHOB team has been returning to old collections and redating them.

6 Tammi 201427min

Professor Alice Roberts talks bacteriophages: viruses that infect the bacteria that infect us. With the rise of antibiotic resistance they are a potential weapon against infection.We hear from Paul Hebert, the biologist behind the International Barcode of Life project – a global effort to classify the entire world’s species according to their DNA. Bristol researchers have discovered that it is more than scent and colour that draws a bee to a flower – there is also an electric field.Claire Turner from the Open University shows us the instrument she uses to detect disease. It can sense when a heart transplant patient is rejecting their new organ, purely through monitoring their breath.

26 Joulu 201327min

Antibacterial soaps and body washes make up an industry worth millions of pounds, but in the USA, producers have been told that they have just over a year to prove their products are safe, or, re-label or reformulate them. Many believe that using antimicrobial soaps, which often include the chemicals triclosan or triclocarban, keeps you clean and reduces the chance of getting ill or passing on germs to others. But the Food and Drug Administration in the USA says it's the job of manufacturers to demonstrate the benefits, to balance any potential risks. Professor Jodi Lindsay, expert in microbial pathogenesis from St Georges, University of London, tells Dr Adam Rutherford where this leaves British and European consumers.The world's most powerful satellite camera was launched today into space. Its mission, to map the billion stars in our galaxy. Professor Gerry Gilmore, Principal Investigator for GAIA, tells Inside Science about the planned "walk through the Milky Way" and BBC Science Correspondent, Jonathan Amos, spells out how GAIA could help detect future asteroids, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs on earth.Just after the Second World War in a site in North Yorkshire, the discovery of a flint blade triggered the discovery of one of the world's most important Mesolithic or Stone Age sites. What makes Star Carr so special is that organic artefacts, bone harpoons, deer headdresses and even homesteads, were preserved in the peat 11000 years ago. But these precious artefacts are in trouble. Changing acidic conditions are turning the Mesolithic remains to jelly. Sue Nelson reports from the Vale of Pickering on how archaeologists are working with chemists to try to pinpoint exactly why the Stone Age remains are deteriorating so quickly.And Professor Chris Turney talks to Adam from his research ship in Commonwealth Bay in the Antarctic, where he is leading a team of scientists to recreate the journey made by Douglas Mawson, 100 years ago, on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.Producer: Fiona Hill.

19 Joulu 201328min