Science In Action

Before December, the United Nations aims to have a global treaty in place covering efforts to limit global plastic production and pollution. In a paper in the journal Science, a team of scientists have used machine learning to estimate what happens by 2050 if we do nothing. But they have also found that the problem is solvable, with the right political will, and as marine ecologist Neil Nathan of...

Many coronaviruses exist in nature that we don’t know much about. We don’t even know how and whether most of them might bind to human cells. Research published in Nature, by scientists at Wuhan and Washington Universities, describes a new way of designing novel receptor sites on cell cultures so that many types of coronavirus may now be cultured and studied to ascertain their risk to humans. Cambr...

This week at least 150 people have been killed due to devastating flash flooding sweeping through areas of Valencia in Spain. Ana Camarasa Belmonte, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Valencia, has been studying the flood patterns and hydrology of the area for years. Even she was astounded by the magnitude of the inundation. And, as Jess Neumann of Reading University in the UK te...

Betelgeuse, one of the brightest and most famous stars in the northern night sky, has varied in brightness with an elusive pattern ever since observations began. Many theories exist as to why it ebbs and flows with apparently two distinct rhythms – one shorter and another around 2000 days long. But just recently two independent astronomical teams have unveiled papers suggesting the existence of an...

The “dewilding” effects of fish farming and mariculture are in the spotlight this week. Farmed fish can impact marine ecosystems in several ways, and surprisingly one of those is the effect it has on consumer perceptions of the impact of eating farmed fish, as researchers Becca Franks of NYU and Laurie Sellars at Yale suggest. Meanwhile, Manu Prakesh and colleagues at Stanford University in the US...

In the week the Nobel prizes for science are announced, Roland Pease takes a look at the stories behind the breakthroughs being recognized, and the themes that connect them. From the discovery of the tiny fragments of RNA that regulate our cells’ behaviour, via computer structures that resemble our brains, and harnessing those sorts of computers to design drugs and medicines, it has been one of th...

As we were putting the finishing touches to last week’s Science in Action, the US National Weather Service was warning of Hurricane Helene’s fast approach to the Florida coast – alerting people to ‘unsurvivable’ storm surges of up to 6 metres. But the category 4 storm powered, as forecast, far past the coast and into the rugged interior of Tennessee and the Carolinas. 150 billion tonnes of rainfal...

Valerie Trouet of the University of Arizona tells us how tree-ring data has been used to show how the jet stream has shaped extreme weather in Europe for centuries, influencing harvests, wildfires and epidemics. Monash University’s Andy Tomkins discusses how, around 460 million years ago, the Earth was briefly encircled by a ring of dust – like Saturn is today, and that the resulting temporary ast...

The Sahara Desert has been experiencing unusually heavy rainfall due to an extratropical cyclone, causing flash floods in Morocco. We hear from Moshe Armon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A 485-million-year temperature record of Earth reveals Phanerozoic climate variability. Brian Huber of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC tells us more. And Mary Lewis of R...

Nearly a year ago, the top of a mountain on the Greenland coast broke off and slid a thousand metres down into the Dickson Fjord. The impact created a tsunami that started two-hundred-metres-high and sloshed between the cliffs for nine days, producing a global seismic signal. But it was so remote, only now are the details becoming clear. We hear from Paula Koelemeijer, Wieter Boone and Søren Rysga...

A Chinese survey of diseased animals farmed for their fur – such as mink, foxes and raccoon dogs - has revealed high levels of concerning viruses, including coronaviruses and flu viruses, many of which appear to jump easily from species to species. John Pettersson of Uppsala University discusses the threat to us humans. We learnt early on in the Covid-19 pandemic how important the genetic details...

In 1977 astronomers recorded a brief and strange radio transmission that looked like it perhaps had even come from an alien civilization. It was named the Wow! signal – because that’s what astronomer Jerry Ehman wrote on the computer printout upon its discovery. But now a team including Abel Méndez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo have come up with an astrophysical hypothesis. An oil ta...

Fishery assessment models – the “backbone” of fisheries management – overestimate the sustainability of the world’s fisheries, according to a study of 230 fisheries worldwide, and populations of many overfished species are in far worse condition than has been reported. We hear from Rainer Froese of GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. The lunar south pole contains evidence of ancient...

In June this year there was the first detected occurrence of rabies in Cape fur seals, discovered after a rabies case in a dog that had been bitten by a seal. Professor Wanda Markotter, Director of the Centre for Viral Zoonoses at University of Pretoria, has been trying to work out how the virus spread into seals and how to keep people (and their pet dogs) safe. The Japan Meteorological Agency iss...

Cases of bird flu in farm workers in the US may be going underreported, due to supposed poor surveillance and lack of testing. We hear from Amy Maxmen of KFF Health News who has been reporting on a study in Texas. We hear from Bradley Moore, Professor of Marine Chemical Biology at University of California, San Diego about marine algae using massive enzymes, dubbed PKZILLAs to biosynthesize fish-ki...

Nasa's Perseverance Rover has found a fascinating rock on Mars that may indicate it hosted microbial life billions of years ago. Abigail Allwood, exobiologist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab, is on the team scrutinising the new Martian data. And a couple of newly discovered, approximately 500 year old fossils from the ‘Cambrian explosion’ of complexity caught presenter Roland Pease’s eye this week. F...

The near extinction of vultures in India may be responsible for an additional half a million human deaths between 2000 and 2005. The widespread use of the painkiller diclofenac in herds of cattle, starting in 1994, led to a massive decline in vulture populations in India, as the drug is poisonous to them. We hear from environmental economist Anant Sudarshan of Warwick University. Cooking like a Ne...

There’s an update from asteroid expert Patrick Michel about the European Space Agency’s Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety. The ESA have received permission to begin preparatory work for the planetary defence mission which will rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis, that will be passing by the Earth on Friday, April 13th 2029. And in news from the Moon this week – a massive cave has been discov...

The 2024 north Atlantic hurricane season has started with a bang, with Hurricane Beryl traversing the whole ocean, and leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean, into Mexico and Texas. Presenter Roland Pease speaks to climate expert Michael Mann of Pennsylvania University about this hurricane season and the role of climate change. And Roland speaks to Amie Eisfeld of the Influenza Resear...

Science in Action is at the UK's Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, hunting for dark matter, melting ancient ice, cleaning up disused mines and looking for the batteries of the future. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Pile of used batteries ready for recycling. Credit: Mindful Media via Getty Images)

An injectable antiviral "PrEP" therapy that gives 100% protection against HIV infection. Trials among young women in South Africa and Uganda proved so effective, they were wound up early to accelerate its use. Linda-Gail Bekker of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation shares her excitement. A new kind of gene therapy that uses the cell's own “epigenetic” mechanisms to silence troublesome portions of our...

How has China reached the top spot of scientific research so quickly? Science editor of The Economist, Ainslie Johnstone, gives us the CCPs grand, broad plans whilst senior reporter for Nature, Gemma Conroy, digs into the specifics of China’s future particle collider. Also, Gene Kirtsky, who has been studying cicadas for 50 years, discusses the spectacle of the millions of insects which have been...

With mice being the latest species to carry the disease, pandemic expert Rick Bright calls for stronger counter measures. “It’s like PTSD from February 2020” he says. The authorities in the USA are responding too slow to the spread of H5N1 bird flu through its dairy farms – even mice are carrying the virus now, and not enough is known of how it is evolving and whether humans are threatened. He tal...

The ‘origami’ superpowers of a single-celled pond hunter, it hunts by launching a neck-like proboscis that can extend more than 30 times its body length. Manu Prakash of Stanford University reveals the amazing mathematical mechanisms of the protist, Lacrymaria olor. It’s a microbe-eat-microbe world out there, with bacteria waging constant war against each other. It’s by dipping into their ever-evo...

AI is already being used in every branch of science, and will become more and more a feature of future breakthroughs. But with its power to find subtle patterns in massive data sets comes a concern about how we will know when to trust its outcomes, and how to rely on its predictions. Science in Action talks to Alison Noble who just completed a Royal Society report on trust in scientific AI. With h...