Bbc Inside Science

Food Standards Agency report reveals 70% of supermarket chicken contaminated. Chicken: It's the nation's favourite meat. But today, a report released by the Food Standards Agency has revealed that around three quarters of that chicken is infected by campylobacter - a family of bacteria, 12 species of which are known to cause food poisoning. The estimated cost to the UK economy is £900 million per year. All supermarkets are implicated and all supply chains too. It doesn't cause outbreaks and thorough cooking kills all the bugs. Professor Hugh Pennington tells Dr Adam Rutherford why campylobacter is such a tough bug to crack. Can machines think? Neuroscientist, chess master and world-champion gamer, Demis Hassabis is this week's winner of the Royal Society's Mullard Award. In 2011, he founded an AI company, Deep Mind which was acquired by Google earlier this year for £400million.He tells Adam why he believes one of the best tests for artificial intelligence is an ability to learn how to play computer games. Wh

Philae lander detects organic molecules on Comet 67P Rosetta scientist, Professor Monica Grady from the Open University discusses the latest news from last week's historic comet mission. Philae, the Rosetta robot probe, made history last week when she finally landed on the surface of Comet 67P. But she ended up lying on her side, and only in partial sunlight. Her batteries were on borrowed time. After around 60 hours, Philae powered down, and went into hibernation mode. However, her instruments harvested some data and now the first results are in.UK-led crowdfunded Moon mission Lunar Mission One aims to land a robotic spacecraft on the unexplored lunar South Pole by 2024. It's a space mission with a difference: it could be funded by you. For a small fee supporters can send a human hair to the Moon in a Blue Peter-style time capsule. And the spacecraft will drill up to 100 metres below the surface to ask questions about the Moon's origin, aiming to find out more about the minerals that exist there, several of

Rosetta After a nail-biting, bumpy, bouncy landing, European Space Agency's Rosetta probe - 'Philae' -lands on the comet 67P. It's already collecting data and beaming back some very impressive images of this dusty, icy space projectile. BBC Space correspondent Jonathan Amos fills us in on the latest news.Thought-controlled genes Brainwaves from human participants activated a light, which in turn switches on specific genes in mice. In this proof of concept study, Professor Martin Fussenegger hopes that one day this technology could be used to control pain, pre-empt epileptic seizures, or in fact communicate with people who have locked in syndrome. It's another example of two very exciting techniques - brain machine interfacing and optogenetics.Arecibo Message Anniversary 40 years ago, on 16 Nov 1974, a message designed to inform intelligent alien civilisations about human existence was beamed into space. Whilst Frank Drake's binary picture message was primarily put together to show the capabilities of the upgr

What is ageing? In 1900, the global average life expectancy was 31, today it's 70, and the number of people over 85 in the UK is predicted to double in the next 20 years. How has ageing evolved, and do we know what is happening in our cells as we age? Professor Richard Faragher, University of Brighton, explains.Sticking plaster-like needle replacement Microneedles on a sticking-plaster-like patch may be the painless and safe way doctors will test for drugs and infections, and give vaccinations in the future. Roland Pease tries an alternative to the traditional injection at Queen's University Belfast with Dr Ryan Donnelly.Science of fire It's November, and these are the days when you may well have a smouldering bonfire in your back garden. Marnie Chesterton meets scientists whose lives are devoted to the behaviour of fire.Comet landing mission nears The Rosetta Mission is entering the final stages before landing on a comet. By this time next week, we will know if the European Space Agency has successfully achi

It's the nearest and most dominant object in our night sky, and has inspired artists, astronauts and astronomers. But fundamental questions remain about our only natural satellite.Where does the Moon come from? Although humans first walked on the Moon over four decades ago, we still know surprisingly little about the lunar body's origin. Samples returned by the Apollo missions have somewhat confounded scientists' ideas about how the Moon was formed. Its presence is thought to be due to another planet colliding with the early Earth, causing an extraordinary giant impact, and in the process, forming the Moon. But, analysing chemicals in Apollo's rock samples has revealed that the Moon could be much more similar to Earth itself than any potential impactor. Geochemist Professor Alex Halliday of the University of Oxford, and Dr Jeff Andrews-Hanna, Colorado School of Mines - who is analysing the results from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar mission - discuss the theories and evidence to

It's 10 Years since an unusual skeleton was unearthed on the island of Flores. This species, Homo floresiensis, dubbed 'the Hobbit' because of its short stature, offered a whole new picture of human evolution and has been causing divisions among scientists ever since. Lucie visits Professor Chris Stringer in the Natural History Museum to pick over the bones of a controversial find.Tall parents tend to have tall children. We already know that height is genetic. Less well known is how various genes control the growing process. Recent research from the University of Exeter found nearly 700 genetic variants that play a role in influencing a person's height. Professor Tim Frayling, a lead author, explains how the work, which involve scanning more than a quarter of a million genomes, could help with disease, forensics and predicting a child's adult height.Great ball of fire. The Sun throws out more than just light and heat; for solar scientists, it is also a source of many mysteries. Why is the surface of the sun l

Ebola Outbreak As the World Health Organisation announces that the situation in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is deteriorating, with widespread and persistent transmission of Ebola Virus Disease, the UK has introduced screening measures at Heathrow airport for passengers arriving from Ebola-affected countries. How has this particular outbreak become so widespread, and where did it start? Lucie Green discusses the source, spread and science of Ebola with Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Nottingham.Ada Lovelace Day Leading the charge in inspiring and celebrating women scientists, technologists and mathematicians is 19th century computer programmer Ada Lovelace. Daughter of poet Lord Byron, collaborator with inventor Charles Babbage, and accomplished mathematician herself, October 14th has been set aside for Ada Lovelace Day. Event founder Suw Charman-Anderson tells us more.Space Weather The Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre is designed to protect the UK from severe

Nobel Prizes 2014 The annual Nobel Prizes for Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry were announced this week.The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to UK-based researcher Prof John O'Keefe as well as May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser who discovered the brain's "GPS system". They discovered how the brain knows where we are and is able to navigate from one place to another. Their findings may help to explain why Alzheimer's disease patients cannot recognise their surroundings.The 2014 Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to Professors Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura in Japan and the US, for the invention of blue light emitting diodes (LEDs). This enabled a new generation of bright, energy-efficient white lamps, as well as colour LED screens.The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner for improving the resolution of optical microscopes. This type of microscope had previously been held back by the presumed limit

Royal Society investigates the decline in their awards to female scientists Last week, the UK's national science academy, the Royal Society, announced its latest round of University Research Fellows (URFs). And they are almost all fellows - in the male sense of the word. Out of 43 new posts, only two of them are women. These positions are for early-career, post-doctoral researchers. But, at the top of the tree, fewer than one in ten science professors are women, and one of the top UK scientific accolades - a Royal Society Fellowship - is held by only one in twenty. To their credit, The Royal Society were "horrified" by this latest round, and their president, Sir Paul Nurse, immediately called for a full investigation into how this happened, saying "this sends out a bad message to young female scientists".Our reporter Tracey Logan asks why Royal Society grants are so important to young scientists, and whether this year's number of female recipients is a sign of gender bias on the awarding committees, or just a

BICEP - gravitational waves and dust One of the biggest scientific claims of 2014 has received another set-back. In March this year, the BICEP2 research team claimed it had found a swirling pattern in the sky left by the rapid expansion of space just fractions of a second after the Big Bang. This announcement was quickly criticised by others, who thought the group had underestimated the confounding effects of dust in our own galaxy. And now, new analysis from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite suggests dust found in our own galaxy may have confounded what was thought to be a universal revelation.India's Mars satellite enters orbit India has successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars, becoming the fourth nation or geo-bloc to do so. Following a few teething troubles with a planned engine burn shortly after launch on 5 November 2013, and a long journey, the Mangalyaan probe has started sending back images of the Red Planet. It is the first time a maiden voyage to Mars has entered orbit succes

European Ancestry New genetic investigation of ancient human remains, combined with archaeological evidence, is shedding new light on the origins of the early European populations. The international team has provided a detailed analysis of waves of immigration from the near east into Europe, and the emerging agricultural practices that came with it, which has come to dominate the traditional practices of indigenous residents.CERN - Artificial retina The human eye and the parts of the brain that process images are second to none when it comes to pattern recognition and concentrating on the important images and ignoring the rest. They have inspired physicists to create a processor that can analyse particle collisions 400 times faster than any other device. In these collisions, protons, that is, ordinary matter, are smashed against protons at close to the speed of light. These processes may produce new particles and help scientists understand matter's mirror - antimatter. Professor Tara Shears, a particle physic

Jack the Ripper "identified" Some of us are morbidly fascinated by the legend of Jack the Ripper - not the world's first serial killer, but the one that coincided with the birth of mass media, and set the ghoulish tone for the 20th century's obsession with murderers. This week a shawl acquired at an auction in 2007 is in the spotlight. Claimed to be found in 1888 at the murder scene of a woman asserted to be the fourth victim of the supposed Ripper, DNA evidence from the fabric is stated to imply one of the most plausible suspects - Aaron Kosminski. However, there are many problems with this "identification" sequence - some historical, some legal, and some scientific. Adam Rutherford focuses on the science by speaking to Jari Louhelainen, a forensic geneticist at Liverpool John Moores University, who produced the forensic analysis. Jon Wetton, another forensic geneticist at the University of Leicester, offers broader insight into how DNA can be used in detecting crime.Future of Scottish science Scottish scien

Bardarbunga A group of earth scientists was in Iceland performing annual maintenance of its equipment, when the volcano Bardarbunga erupted. Professor Simon Redfern has now joined them and speaks to Adam Rutherford from the slopes of neighbouring volcano Askja. He explains how all this recent volcanic activity is the expression of Europe's tectonic drift away from America. And rather than this being a smooth, continuous process, the plates move at the surface in a jerky way - causing these earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.Geology in Minecraft The British Geological Survey has built a full version of the geology of Britain into the online game Minecraft. Minecraft is a so-called 'sandbox' game, meaning there are no specific objectives, but players are free to explore existing worlds or collaborate to build their own with a range of virtual building blocks. The game is a huge phenomenon, with over a 100 million registered users, mostly under the age of 30. By adding an extra layer of geological features, the

Manipulating mouse memory Optogenetics allows researchers to use light to turn the genes involved in memory, in the brain, off and on. It's a powerful tool for seeing exactly where specific types of memory are formed and processed. Researchers at MIT have been using the technique to manipulate fearful or pleasurable memories associated with a particular location, in mice. This is so they can see how memories are overwritten in the brain's processing regions.London pollution Cities in Britain have moved on a great deal from air pollution events, like the London smog of 1952, where 4000 people died in a week. But a recent report has put London air pollution levels as bad as some of the worst in the world, on a level with Mexico City and Beijing. Pollution is a mixture of gases and tiny particulate matter (or PM) -particles too small to be filtered out by our noses, and which end up going straight into our lungs. Dr Rossa Brugha and reporter Marnie Chesterton take a bicycle ride through London's busy streets and

TB in the New World Brand new work in comparative genetics is shedding light on the spread of TB. Scientists have shown that the initial spread of the deadly bacterial disease tuberculosis to the Americas didn't come with the European explorers and invaders. Skeletons of pre-Columbian Peruvians have shown signs of TB. So where did it come from? DNA samples collected from the ancient bacteria show they're closely related to the TB strain that infects seals and sea lions. So did the disease pass from humans in Africa to seals on the coast which then crossed the ocean and infected the Peruvians, 1000 years ago?Truth, Trust and the internet A recent YouGov poll revealed that the British public trusts the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia more than it trusts the BBC. The internet has revolutionised how we receive information and check references. But how much should we trust online facts? Adam talks to Carl Miller, from the Centre for Analysis of Social Media at think-tank Demos, about how Wikipedia entries are creat

Anaesthetics. General anaesthetic is an essential part of modern medicine. Millions of surgical procedures, many life-saving, simply could not be performed without rendering the patient unconscious with one of a long list of drugs that induce anaesthesia. But, we don't know how they work. Part of this mystery is because we're not entirely sure what we mean when we say unconscious. But part of it is that there's a whole fleet of different molecules than can work as an anaesthetic, so there's no well-known pathway we can study. Neuroscientist, Luca Turin at the Alexander Fleming Research Center in Greece thinks that the answer to how they work, could lie, not at the chemical level, but at the quantum level.2014 Iquique Earthquake in Chile Before the massive 8.1-8.2 Magnitude earthquake struck Iquique in Chile, in April, this year, there were a series foreshocks at the fault line. Adam Rutherford asks Roland Pease if these creaks could be a way of warning us about an imminent big quake in the future. They also

Dinosaur A jumble of bones found in Venezuela belong to a group of very early dinosaurs, that could have been herd animals. Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum explains to Professor Alice Roberts how a jumble of bones found in a 'bone bed' belong to a number of individual Laquintasaura venezuelae dinosaurs. They are an ancient, small, omnivorous dinosaur, which could have survived the Tertiary/Jurassic extinction event 200 million years ago.Genetically Editing Chickens Diseases devastate livestock around the world. In chickens for example the deadly strain of bird flu and the lesser known bacterial infection Campylobacter, does not only harm the chickens but is also a real threat to human health and welfare. Scientists are continually trying to develop vaccines, but the strains of bacteria keep evolving resistance to them. One of the solutions being explored at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, is genetic. Using a subtle form of genetic modification, called genome editing. The team are trying to fin

ExpeRimental There's an online wealth of science demonstrations you can try at home with your kids. But what's sometimes lacking is the encouragement of questioning the science in these DIY experiments. Science teacher and film maker Alom Shaha has devised a series of videos with the Royal Institution showing parents experimenting with home-made lava lamps, bubbles and bottle cannons. He hopes that amidst the mess and mistakes, some scientific thinking can be nurtured.Rosetta The European Space Agency's robotic spacecraft Rosetta is about to start its detailed study of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In the audacious and risky mission, the craft will follow the orbit of the comet as it approaches and passes the Sun. It will attempt to land a probe on the surface of the icy, rocky mass. It's hoped the mission will provide great insight into what comets are made of, how they behave as they heat up, creating its gassy coma and tail. And it's hoped Rosetta and its lander will be able to tell about where Earth's

Face recognition The software that analyses images of your face, captured online or when you're out and about, has rapidly improved. Adam visits Amscreen, to test the cameras they deploy at supermarket checkouts to determine your age and sex, to inform advertisers of the best demographic to target. This raises ethical and privacy issues which Adam discusses with privacy expert Professor Colin Bennett and author of "The formula, about algorithms and the algorithm culture", Luke Dormehl.Quantifying expressions Is a look of contempt, or a smile, a universal expression or do they vary across cultures? Marnie Chesterton visits Glasgow University's Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, where the scientists are building a huge database of faces, in order to unpick and quantify our expressions. Dr Oliver Garrod from the Generative Face Grammar Group demonstrates how they can capture your face, and animate it.Evolutionary psychology There is a long list of evolutionary explanations for the human condition. Mostly

Plants and bees The relationship between flowering plants and bees is a long-evolved, complex one. Plant scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are currently conducting field trials to see how Acontium, or Monkshood, uses toxins to protect itself against nectar-thieving, short-tongued bumblebees. But how does it make sure it doesn't poison the helpful, pollinating long-tongued bumblebees?Plants from Roots to Riches Professor Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew will be presenting a new series on BBC Radio 4 exploring our relationship with plants from the birth of botany through to modern day. She describes some of the series highlights.The Azolla Event A tiny ancient fern-like pond weed could have been responsible for changing the fate of the planet. Some scientists think that Azolla could have played a significant role in reversing an increase in the greenhouse effect that occurred 55 million years ago. The researchers claim that massive patches of Azolla growing on the