BBC Inside Science

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.

23 Jul 201528min

It's billed as the last great encounter in planetary exploration. For the past nine years the New Horizons spacecraft has travelled 5bn km (3bn miles) to get to Pluto On July 14th it performed its historic fly-by encounter with the dwarf planet.Adam Rutherford examines the first images from the New Horizon's probe and hears the first interpretations from mission leaders and scientists at the NASA New Horizon's space centre as the data arrives back to earth. Expect new light to be shed on the Solar System's underworld as first impression s reveal Pluto to be a champagne coloured body with 11000 ft ice mountains and surprisingly smooth surfaces that suggests recent geological activityFor people who grew up with the idea that there were "nine planets", this is the moment they get to complete the set. Robotic probes have been to all the others, even the distant Uranus and Neptune. Pluto is the last of the "classical nine" to receive a visit. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discusses how this 2,300km-wide ice-covered rock was demoted in 2006 to the status of mere "dwarf planet", but as "Pluto killer" Mike Brown argues, this shouldn't dull our enthusiasm.As Adam Rutherford reveals, nothing about this corner of the solar system has been straightforward. Little is known about Pluto's creation -but as the New Horizons probe passed Pluto for this first close up of the dwarf planet , scientists anticipate new insights into the evolution of our solar system and even earth's early history.With contributions from mission scientists Alan Stern, Fran Bagenell, Joel Parker and astronomer Mark Showalter. Updates too as interpretations rapidly develop, from BBC correspondent Jonathan Amos and astrophysicist Chris Lintott.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

16 Jul 201528min

Adam Rutherford talks to Emily Holmes from the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, about two new studies on preventing intrusive memories. She discusses why stopping someone from sleeping after seeing a lab based film of traumatic events like a news reel or car crash may actually stop people from forming intrusive memories about those films. This offers an intriguing insight in to the role that sleep has in consolidating intrusive and possibly traumatic memories. She also explains how if memories of a traumatic event are laid down, why playing a computer game like Tetris could disrupt that memory and stop it from becoming intrusive. Silent Aircraft: The Davies report recently recommended a new, third runway should be built at Heathrow airport but as flight numbers increase how quiet can planes of the future become? Adam talks to Jeremy Astley from Southampton University and Michael Carley from Bath University about where the noise in jet engines comes from, how engineering can make them quieter and will the silent aircraft initiative ever make a truly silent aircraft.Nuclear Fusion. For decades scientists have tried to harness the power of the Sun to smash atomic nuclei together to create a clean, limitless energy source from nuclear fusion. Marnie Chesterton talks to scientists from Tokomak energy about their new design for a Tokomak machine that has already exceeded previous records. Could it be a vital step forward in the quest for nuclear fusion on Earth?New Horizons: On 14th July 2015 the spaceship, New Horizons will complete its 10 year mission to flyby Pluto. BBC Science correspondent Jonathan Amos gives Adam a preview and tells him why he's so excited about the mission and what they hope to discover about the darker regions of our Solar System.

9 Jul 201527min

Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire has just finished trials of a new way to repel aphids from wheat. It's a clever system, that takes a gene for a pheromone, called E beta farnesene, from peppermint, and inserts it into wheat. Aphids let off E Beta Farnesene when they are under attack or when a dead bug is detected, and idea was to have the wheat produce the chemical alarm itself. In the lab, the plants had driven aphids away in their droves. But in the field, where controlled lab conditions are not present, there was no measurable reduction. So what's gone wrong? Adam speaks to spoke to plant geneticist to Dr Gia Aradottir who worked on the Rothamsted trial and Professor Mike Bevan of the John Innes Institute.Top biologists have recently met to launch the National Institutes for Bioscience, the N.I.B, a star-studded partnership of eight great British biological Institutes, such as the Roslin- former home of Dolly the Sheep - and the world's longest running agricultural research station Rothamsted Research. George Freeman MP, Britain's first Minister for Life Sciences, provided a bit of glamour to mark the occasion. Tracey Logan was there to meet the key scientists and to ask the Minister about the ambition and role of the N.I.B.A team of scientists has just revealed how they've used genetics to scan the peoples of the world - and amazingly of extinct people from prehistory - to see who can smell what. They've used one particular olfactory receptor, called OR7D4, to build up a global map of what people can smell. Adam Rutherford speaks to Professor Matthew Cobb, from Manchester University to discuss how the different peoples of the world - including long extinct humans - smell different things. Why are parrots such good copycats? A team in Duke University in the US thinks that they have uncovered the exact spot in the brain that gives the parrot this ability. Professor Erich Jarvis studies the genes involved in the structure of bird-brains, and discusses some ideas about how those neurons have developed through a combination of behaviour and genetics.

2 Jul 201528min

Malaria is the single greatest cause of death that humankind has ever experienced, and continues to be a colossal burden on the health of people all over the world. We've had various treatments over the years, but all of them have been weakened when Plasmodium - the parasite that causes the disease - evolves resistance. So the hunt is perpetually on for novel antimalarial drugs. This month, a new one is published in the journal Nature. Adam Rutherford talks to Professor Ian Gilbert from the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee University to discuss with him how the new compound attacks the plasmodium parasite to prove effective. Radio 3 is currently in the midst of a season focusing on all aspects of the Classical Voice. Science is playing a growing insightful role in understanding how to get the best out of the singing voice. Many singers base their careers on a particular quality of voice, and that sometimes can sound as though we're imposing a lot of strain on our vocal cords. We hear from Julian McGlashan, an Ear Nose and Throat specialist at Nottingham University Hospitals who has taken singers and placed a video endoscope down each of their throats to observe how their vocal tracts behave differently according to the style they sing. And David Howard head of the Audio Lab at York University, discusses how new technology is helping us understand how it's possible for a singer's voice to cut above the sound of an orchestra and still be heard at the back of a vast auditorium.Species might seem like an obvious way to classify organisms, and one way we define species is by reproductive isolation - If you can't breed with it, it's another species. If we successfully bred with Neanderthals, and produced fertile offspring, surely that means that they must be the same species as us? Adam talks to Professor of evolutionary genetics from UCL Mark Thomas to navigate through the messy world of human species.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

25 Jun 201527min

The ALMA telescope array in the Atacama Desert is one of the most sensitive earth based telescopes. It has now captured images of the very first galaxies. Adam talks to Dr Mark Swinbank of Durham University who's part of the team who've unleashed data this week from that universal hinterland that's set to fill in the missing gaps in our understanding of the evolution of the universe.The European Parliament voted this week to place a moratorium on new licences for member states to frack for shale gas until proven safe for the environment. But how dangerous is fracking? A set of articles out this week in the journal Seismological Research Letters attempts to address and dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about fracking, and to get to the root of the very real, increasing frequency of seismic activity. US Geologist Justin Rubinstein and University of Strathclyde geologist Zoe Shipton discuss the evidenceAs global temperatures increase Ice Core scientists searching for clues to Earth's past climatic history face a ticking clock to gather enough core samples before they melt. Only a tiny amount of mountain glacial ice has ever been collected and studied, and in 2016 ice cores from the Alps will be moved to safer storage in Nature's freezer - a giant vault in Antarctica. Marnie Chesterton meets Ice Core researchers from British Antarctic Survey to find out why they need this archive.A new paper shows the first recorded instances of alcohol drinking in wild chimpanzees. Tanya Humle from the University of Kent describes the novel behaviour. With anthropologist Professor Catherine Hill, Dr Humle discusses whether "wild" chimp research is even possible in an age when human and chimp habitats overlap.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

11 Jun 201528min

Think of earthquake cities and places like San Francisco or Los Angeles spring to mind. But London is also seismically active. 200 years ago, there was an earthquake under Trafalgar Square. Dr Richard Ghail from Imperial College London meets Adam Rutherford on the banks of the Thames to discuss the fault lines under their feet and what engineering challenges this poses.In the beginning, there were chemicals. A geological blink of the eye later, there was LUCA, the last universal common ancestor; a complex cell. How the chemistry became biology is one of the biggest mysteries in science. New studies from University of North Carolina researchers chips away at this unknown, offering evidence on how the genetic code developed in two stages. Adam meets Dr Matt Powner, a chemist at University College London studying the origins of life, to find out how researchers try to answer this fundamental question. How do we know what our landscape used to landscape? Pollen, from buried mud layers, offers a picture of sorts. By gathering tiny pollen grains, and identifying the plant species at different ages, Dr Ralph Fyfe from Plymouth University builds up a picture of European landscapes thousands of years ago. Peak deforestation happened several thousand years ago, as our pyromaniacal ancestors started forest fires to clear land for agriculture. Roland Pease reports.A plague is killing thousands of common frogs in ponds across the UK. Ranavirus causes ulcers on the skin and haemorrhaging. A team at Exeter University has noticed that ponds with fish are more likely to have an outbreak of this virus. Amber Griffiths urges Radio 4 listeners to leave their ponds to the wildlife, and keep frogs and goldfish apart.

4 Jun 201528min

We're becoming more reliant on robots to assist in hostile zones from extinguishing forest fires to bomb disposal to decontaminating nuclear facilities. But whereas humans can quickly adapt to injuries, current robots cannot 'think outside the box' to find a new behaviour when they get damaged. Tracey Logan speaks to computer scientist Jeff Clune who's developed a new way to allow robots to adapt to damage in less than two minutes. It will enable more robust, effective, autonomous robots, and may shed light on the principles that animals use to adapt to injury.

28 Mai 201527min