Science In Action

After 60 years of doubling computer complexity every two years, can Moore’s law still predict the future power of the devices we use?In 1965, electronics pioneer Gordon Moore was asked to predict the next ten years of progress with the then new-fangled silicon integrated circuits. He estimated, based on physics and manufacturing technologies then available what seemed remarkable: that every two years they would double in complexity, and halve in price, until 1975.60 years on, perhaps the even more remarkable thing is that they just kept doubling.Can Moore’s law hold into future decades? What are the next technological innovations that might keep it running? Sri Samavedam is the vice president for silicon technologies at imec in Belgium, whose job it is to think about the practicalities of manufacturing the next generations of chips years before they become real.Scott Aaronsen of the University of Texas is a thinker in the field of Quantum Computing – could quantum computing keep the rate of growth going? Or d

Pain, particularly chronic pain, is hard to research. New therapeutics are hard to screen for. Patients are not all the same. Sergui Pascu and colleagues at Stanford university have been growing brain samples from stem cells. Then they began connecting different samples, specialised to represent different brain regions. This week they announce their most complex “assembloid” yet, one that even reacts to hot chilli, passing a signal from the sensory neurons through to the thinking bits. The hope is that it can provide insights on how pain, and potential painkillers, work.Human brains are notoriously large, particularly infants. Whilst for primates the human pelvis is quite narrow, to allow us to walk and run on two legs. This notoriously makes childbirth, well, not as straightforward as most other species. This evolutionary “obstetric dilemma” has been debated for decades. Marianne Brasil, of Western Washington University, and colleagues, have published this week a huge study of contemporary human genes and an

How Myanmar’s tragic earthquake left a 500km scar on the surface of the earth in just 90 seconds. Also, more hints of a link between shingles vaccines and reduced dementia, and how earth’s first oxygen breathers seem to have evolved way before there was enough oxygen to breath.Judith Hubbard is a seismologist and earthquake analyst who has been gleaning what scientific information we can find on the tragic quake that struck Myanmar last week. There seems to be some sort of link between the herpes virus that causes shingles and some people’s risk of Alzheimer’s dementia. At least, the latest paper appears to confirm so, according to an analysis published in Nature this week. Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University and colleagues have looked at data from public health records in NHS Wales in the UK, and have retrospectively performed a “natural experiment”, finding a clear suggestion that a vaccine against the virus that causes shingles seems to confer a lower likelihood of developing dementia over the subsequ

This week, after five years of research, two newly discovered antiviral molecules have been shown to combat coronaviruses. Johan Neyts of the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Leuven outlines how he hopes the new molecule developed by his team might help us deal with emerging pandemics in the future. But as the US halts all Covid related research, will drugs like these ever hit the shelves? Among the grants terminated this week by the National Institute for Health is a programme called AViDD, AntiViral Drug Discovery, supporting 9 independent consortia. Annette von Delft of Oxford University and Ed Griffen of the drugs discovery company MedChemica spoke to us about the overnight shut down of years of work and importance of antiviral development. The longest ever carbon-based molecules have been discovered by the Mars Curiosity rover. Caroline Freissinet of the Laboratoire Atmosphères et Observations Spatiales talked us through the meticulous planning and geological chance that made this possible, and whe

There is continued upheaval in US scientific institutions under the new Trump administration. This week $400 million dollars-worth of grants have been frozen at Columbia University in response to “illegal” protests on the campus. President Trump also recently accused the Biden Administration of spending $8 million dollars on "transgender mice" experiments. We talk to two scientists, Kelton Minor and Patricia Silveyra, who have been affected in different ways. Also, as the first data from the European Space Agency's Euclid mission is released, Euclid project leader Valeria Pettorino tells us how this impressive space telescope hopes to unlock the secrets of the dark universe.And, around this time last year we heard about the H5N1 strain of bird flu finally jumping to the Antarctica Peninsula. Today, an expedition led by virologist Antonio Alcami confirms that the virus has spread to every animal species at each site they visited.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Ella Hubber Production co-ordinator: Jana Hol

Five years after the WHO pandemic announcement, an H5N1 call to arms from global health leaders. Also, the oldest western European face is found, the oldest impact crater possibly identified, and strange radio signals from space maybe explained.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Image: US To Boost Egg Imports As Prices Soar On Bird Flu. Credit: Bloomberg via Getty).

As the new administration in the US continues to make cuts to government agencies and scientific funding, NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been particularly trimmed. This week the professional organisation for weather forecasters – the American Meteorological Society has published a statement pleading for clemency, arguing that the whole US Weather Enterprise is at risk. It’s current president elect, veteran weather broadcaster Alan Sealls describes how it’s not just US weather forecasts that appear bleak.As the journal Science Advances publishes a special edition highlighting areas of women’s health research, we speak with two researchers who may have found a link between menopause – or perhaps hormonal changes – and the age it occurs, with Altzeimer’s Disease. Madeline Wood or the University of Toronto and Kaitlin Casaletto of UCSF describe how synaptic health – the fitness of the brain - at death seems even to be less attenuated in women who used hormonal therapy during their

Just two weeks ago the world learned of an asteroid that had an almost 3% chance of striking earth in less than a decade. Astronomers kept looking, and a team including Olivier Hainaut at ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Palanar, in Chile, have managed to narrow down the uncertainty such that we now know it will definitely not hit the earth. The secret of making such observations after most telescopes could no longer see it was down to the exceptionally dark skies there. But these may be under threat. A plan has been made to build a large power plant, including sustainable hydrogen production around 11km away from the otherwise isolated site, and astronomers around the world are rallying to call for the plant to be built further away so that its construction will not spoil the otherwise unique observation conditions. One of the signatories of a petition to that effect is Julia Siedel, also of ESO, who just last week published the first 3D atmospheric analysis of an exoplanet’s climate. As she explains, future si

The Lancet this week features a paper calling for a financially sustainable network of influenza labs and experts across Europe. Marion Koopmans was one of the 32 expert signatures, and she describes how Europe needs to learn some lessons from the model developed previously in the US. The ongoing worries around avian H5N1 would be a great example of why funding for that sort of frontline strategic science needs not to be reliant on ad-hoc, potentially political, funding grants.This weekend, a conference is taking place in Asilomar, CA, to mark 50 years since the 1975 conference there at which scientists developed some rules and guidelines around the future practice of genetic science. The historic Asilomar conference is celebrated by many as the moment scientists first demonstrated that they could spot risks, and self-regulate their activities, around novel and disruptive technologies. Author and scientist Matthew Cobb of the University of Manchester, and Shobita Parthasarathy of the University of Michigan di

This week the recently spotted asteroid 2024 YR4 had its odds of missing us “spectacularly” slashed by 1 percentage point. Still nothing to worry about maintains Patrick Michel of the International Asteroid Warning Network, and he expects that with better tracking data in the next few months (even courtesy of the JWST) that tiny chance of collision will fall further. However, as he explains, it’s very comforting to know that we now have such a sophisticated tracking network, and even better, thanks to NASA’s DART mission, even a demonstrable method for doing something about it if the numbers go the other way…But other extraterrestrial bombardments are harder to detect at all. This week scientists of the KM3NeT collaboration report in the journal Nature their detection of the most energetic neutrino ever noticed. Almost countless numbers travel through the earth – and us – every second, but this little beauty arrived from deep space, plummeting through hundreds of miles of rock and sea (via Malta) to collide w

The mystery swarm of small earthquakes near the island of Santorini beg for more data collection. Also, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US goes offline and whales learn song like kids learn language.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Josie Hardy(Photo: Greece earthquake. Credit: AFP)

Nasa's OSIRIS-REx mission to collect a sample from an asteroid has been a great success. Asteroid Bennu's sample yields a watery pool of history, thanks to an international team of scientists including the London Natural History Museum's Sarah Russell. Also, in a week of tumultuous changes to federal funding and programmes, we hear from some US scientists affected and concerned by Executive Orders from the White House. Betsy Southwood, formerly of the Environmental Protection Agency, is worried not just about the government employees’ careers, but the environment itself and the whole of environmental science in the US and the world. Chrystal Starbird runs a lab at the University of North Carolina and is worried about the fate of grants aimed at diversifying scientific expertise, but also that some grant schemes are getting erroneously included in the anti-DEI clampdown. And Lawrence Gostin is an eminent health lawyer, proud of the NIH and all it has achieved.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Pr

Thirty per cent of the Arctic is switching from carbon sink to carbon source. But could future fertilizer be made deep underground using less resources? Also, how and perhaps why globally 2024 had the highest number of fatal landslides in over 20 years, and an unexpected sound from space prompts a re-evaluation of how the earth’s magnetic field interacts with the environment around it.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Photo: Magnificent icebergs. Credit: MB Photography/Getty Images)

New types of snake-bite anti-venoms are designed by AI. Also, how much meat did human ancestors eat? How the Baltic Nord Stream gas pipeline rupture of 2022 was the biggest single release of methane ever caused by humans, and that Pluto met Charon, not with a bang, but more of a kiss.Using a high precision technique for spotting different isotopes of Nitrogen, Tina Lüdecke of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry has concluded that a group of early hominin Australopithecus living in South Africa were predominantly vegetarian, putting the date that human ancestors started eating meat (and thence growing bigger brains) to more recently. The technique, she thinks, can enlighten prehistoric food webs and ecologies from millions of years ago.Last year’s Nobel prizes showed the potential new techniques of AI to design synthetic proteins. Timothy P Jenkins and colleagues decided to try designing treatments for snakebite venoms, with remarkable apparent success. It could save many thousands of lives a year.Since the

H5N1 bird flu is still spreading across farms in the USA and this week claimed its first human life in North America - an elderly patient in Louisiana infected by backyard poultry. But last week, Sonja Olsen, Associate Director for Preparedness and Response in the CDC’s flu division, and her colleague Shikha Garg, published new analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine summarizing the human cases and epidemiology so far. A lab study underscoring a suspected link between the virus responsible for cold sores, and Alzheimers, the most common form of dementia, has been published in Science Signalling this week. The study, by Dana Cairns of Tufts University, looks at whether repetitive brain trauma – another risk factor - adds to the evidence that latent herpes simplex can be involved. Song Lin, a chemist at Cornell University who has won prizes for pioneering the use of electrical currents to drive chemical reactions rather than heat, has teamed up with Cornell micro engineer Paul McEuen to power up a new k

Sars CoV-2 has been with us for five years. In the second of a 2-part special, Science in Action asks how well was science prepared for it? And are we any better prepared for the next one? Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield, with Debbie Kilbride Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Sars CoV-2 has been with us for five years. In the first of a 2-part special, Science in Action asks how well was science prepared for it? And are we any better prepared for the next one?Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield, with Debbie Kilbride Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

New insights into how our skin learns to tolerate and co-exist with bacteria on its surface show great potential for the development of simpler and less invasive vaccines. Stanford University’s Djenet Bousbaine has published two papers in Nature detailing the microbiological research and mouse vaccination experiments that could change the future of immunisation. The Sun is the hardest place in the Solar System to reach. But by the time the next edition of Science in Action is on air, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will have swooped through the scorching corona layer of the Sun, re-emerged, and be readying itself to relay the details of magnetic fields and particle storms to the team. NASA Helioscience deputy manager, Nicky Rayl, reveals all about the mission and explains why the Parker Probe’s future looks bright. And a trip half a billion years back - and then some - to the dawn of complex life here on Earth. Microfossil hunter Shuhai Xiao, from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, has been co

Heatwaves in the pacific ocean have had a devastating effect on seabird populations in the north eastern US. Julia Parrish and colleagues publish this week 4 million deaths of Alaskan common murres attributable to rising water temperatures during 2014-16, representing half the population. One idea is that the fish on which the birds feed swim at deeper depths to find cooler temperatures, taking them below the depth the birds can dive. Worse, the reduced population numbers have endured almost ten years later. Pre-eclampsia affects up to 5 percent of pregnancies across the world. It reduces blood flow through the placenta, endangering mother, and even hindering the development of the foetus. But a promising approach to a possible therapy is described by Kelsey Swingle and colleagues this week. Much like some covid vaccines, by using a sort of lipid nanoparticles to deliver mRNA directly to the placenta in pregnant mice has resulted in healthier outcomes by widening the placental capillaries, allowing blood to f

Scientists have found that just one mutation in the current H5N1 virus in cattle can switch its preference from avian to human receptors. Jim Paulson and colleagues at the Scripps Institute did not use the whole virus to investigate this, but proteins from one of the Texas farm workers found to be infected. It suggests the bovine H5N1 virus has already evolved subtly. Meanwhile, Richard Webby of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis helps us catch up on the latest known about the case of the Canadian teenager taken seriously ill a month ago with a different variant of avian H5N1. A debate has been rumbling this last year about the extent of ocean warming by, perhaps paradoxically, the reduction of particulate pollution from the fuel used by ships. The idea is that the small particles of sulphates and nitrates in the soot from funnels actually formed clouds over shipping lanes out at sea. This in turn sheltered the oceans to some extent from solar radiation, thus making latter decades of the 20th