BBC Inside Science

Food crime is now big business that criss crosses national boundaries, according to today's report into the safety and authenticity of our food. Public Analyst, Dr Duncan Campbell tells Dr Adam Rutherford that he and his colleagues are hampered by lack of funding and the lack of a national plan for a sustainable laboratory infrastructure. While report author, Professor Chris Elliott, the director...

Badger culls in England have ended and Professor Roland Kao from the University of Glasgow discusses with Dr Adam Rutherford the scientific options remaining to tackle the spread of bovine tuberculosis. Field trials of the TB cattle vaccine are due to start next year and Professor Kao hopes that their success in sequencing the genome of Mycobactrium bovis will also provide a greater understanding...

Therapeutic hypothermia is standard treatment for cardiac arrest patients to protect against the damaging or deadly repercussions of a beatless heart. But this global practice has been called into question after research in the New England Journal of Medicine reported no difference in survival rates between patients chilled to 33 degrees and those cooled to just below normal body temperature to 36...

Every twenty years there's a detailed survey of the birds of the UK and Ireland and today, the 2007-2011 Bird Atlas is published. Adam Rutherford hears from Dawn Balmer from the British Trust for Ornithology about the citizen scientists, the forty thousand volunteers who collected data on a staggering 19 million birds - 502 different species - and meets their record breaking volunteer, Chris Reyno...

Global experts in DNA identification are flying to the Philippines to assess whether they can help families to determine, beyond doubt, which of the hundreds of victims of Typhoon Haiyan are their relatives. The International Commission on Missing Persons in Sarajevo used DNA matching to identify the thousands killed in the former Yugoslavia and has since helped in conflict zones around the world....

A hundred thousand Britons are being asked to donate their sequenced DNA, their personal genome, to a vast database on the internet, so scientists can use the information for medical and genetic research. The Personal Genome Project-UK was launched today and participants are being warned, as part of the screening process, that their anonymity won't be guaranteed. Stephan Beck, Professor of Medical...

A NASA spacecraft the size of a sofa is currently orbiting the Moon, gathering information about the toxic perils of moon dust. Dirt from the moon is sharp, spiky and sticky and it caused enormous problems for early astronauts as Professor Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum tells Dr Lucie Green. Joining Lucie from NASA HQ in Washington DC, Sarah Noble, programme scientist on the LADEE Mi...

Britain's legacy of nuclear waste dates back 60 plus years and a long term solution to deal with it hasn't yet been found. After this week's announcement that the UK will have a new nuclear power station, Hinkley C in Somerset, Dr Adam Rutherford asks Professor Sue Ion, former Director of Technology at British Nuclear Fuels and Chair of the European Commission's Science and Technology Committee, E...

The link between genetics and a child's academic performance hit the headlines this week when Education Secretary, Michael Gove's outgoing special advisor, Dominic Cummings, called for education policy to incorporate the science behind genes and cognitive development. Mr Cummings cited the Professor of Behavioural Genetics, Robert Plomin, as a major source, and Professor Plomin tells Dr Adam Ruthe...

The US has shut down government science with potentially devastating results for American and international science projects. Many individual scientists are banned from talking but Matt Hourihan from the American Association for the Advancement of Science tells Dr Adam Rutherford about the serious consequences of the political squabble. Roland Pease gives the low down on this week's Nobel Prizes i...

Dr Adam Rutherford and guests explore the scientific mysteries of the menopause after scientists in the US and Japan successfully induced pregnancy in post-menopausal women. Also in the programme, we hear from decision scientist Baruch Fischhoff on the difficulties of trying to communicate uncertainty in science in the wake of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. F...

Fracking is touted as a technology that will lower UK energy bills. It's a controversial technique which unlocks natural gas from shale rock. But it raises many environmental concerns. So what does the science say? Adam Rutherford sorts science fact from science fiction, putting your frack FAQs to four experts. Reporter Gaia Vince travels to a gas well site in Warrington to discover the various te...

As Syria agrees to destroying its chemical weapon stocks, Adam Rutherford looks at how you solve a problem like Sarin. Dr Joanna Kidd from King's College London gives us a potted history of chemical weaponry. Environmental toxicologist, Prof Alastair Hay, from Leeds University has worked on chemical warfare issues for four decades. In the 1990s, he identified mustard gas and sarin residues from so...

As Spanish researchers unveil new stem cell research, Dr Adam Rutherford talks to Professor of Regenerative Medicine Fiona Watt. They look back at the history of stem cell research and what the future holds for regenerative medicine. Last week's discussion on science practicals generated huge amounts of feedback. Some listeners consider school practicals the secret to their success, others remembe...

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 challe...

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 S...

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...