BBC Inside Science

Dr Adam Rutherford asks whether the proposed ice wall around the Fukushima nuclear plant will finally halt the radioactive leaks they've suffered since the tsunami in 2011.BBC Tokyo correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes gives an insider's view on the current crisis and public reaction to the £300m rescue plan announced this week. Plus, Prof Neil Hyatt from Sheffield University describes the challen...

Science is supposed to be objective. Research by Professor John Ioannidis suggests the reality is falling short of the ideal. He talks to Alice Roberts about bias in softer science disciplines, and how having an American on the team leads to more exaggerated claims for the results. Is this due to the extra pressures they face to come up with new and exciting findings? Bomb-detection dogs are curre...

Prof Alice Roberts goes Inside Science this week to discuss the science behind artificial reefs. The 70 concrete blocks around Gibraltar are currently causing a diplomatic controversy as the Spanish government claim they restrict commercial fishing. We look at how artificial reefs are made and what effect they have on the marine environment. Bees have faced multiple dangers in recent years, from p...

Influenza causes up to five million cases of severe illness and half a million deaths globally every year. Yet, as Adam Rutherford finds out, our current vaccination strategy is a seasonal game of chance, based on guessing the strain that will appear next. Research published this week in Science Translational Medicine, by a team from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, offers hope for a universal fl...

Cultured meat was on the menu earlier this week, but Mark Post's public tasting of his lab-grown burger marks the culmination of decades of research on producing artificial meat. Adam Rutherford talks to one of the other major players in the world of manmade animal products, Gabor Forgacs. However, his company, Modern Meadow, is concentrating on launching a different product first - cultured leath...

July has seen train crashes in Canada, Pakistan, France, Spain and Switzerland. Inside Science asks if this is a trend or just a coincidence. Professor David Spiegelhalter, an expert in the public perception of risk, explains whether there is such a thing as a 'crash season'. Microbiologists working on the Mary Rose in Portsmouth have discovered a new type of metal-eating bacteria which is damagin...

Nobel Prize and - as of this week, Copley Medal - winner Andre Geim outlined in Nature today his vision for the next generation of super-materials. Chemist Prof Andrea Sella joins Adam to explain how the discovery of graphene may have been the start of a remarkable new class of tailor made materials technically known as 'Van der Waals heterostructures'.This week on Show Us Your Instrument, Prof So...

This week saw the publication of the annual government statistics on scientific research on animals. Overall, it again shows an increase, but does that tell the whole story? Wendy Jarrett of the organisation Understanding Animal Research shares her thoughts. We hear from amateur and professional would-be astronauts about their training regime and selection process from Major Tim Peake, the UK’s ne...

Scientists investigate viruses in order to save lives. But could that same knowledge also help other people create dangerous viruses to use as weapons of terror? This Thursday evening, a public debate is being held by the Society of Biology around these issues of "Dual Use" research. In an age of synthetic biology, mail order genes, and open access publication, what are the pros and cons of sharin...

Today the government announced a plan to rid England of bovine TB within 25 years. Adam Rutherford looks back at how this issue has evolved and the extent to which scientific evidence has informed the eradication strategies, from culling badgers to vaccination programs. Pharmacognosy is the study of medicines found in nature. Reporter Gaia Vince travels to the seaside to find out how corals could...