 Radio National's science flagship: your essential source of what's making news in the complex world of scientific research, scandal and discovery.Primary Format :
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Science Show - 2008-08-30
Primates - threats and research
Most primates are under extreme threat. Some from hunting, as in bonobos, while the Ebola virus threatens most primates. At the Adelaide Zoo, Carla Litchfield is planning a program where primate trainers and others stay for long periods in cages with their animals. There are some comforts, but other environmental factors are a challenge, like extreme ranges in temperature.
Attacking chytrid, the killer frog fungus
Of 6,300 amphibians in the world, New Zeala ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-08-23 Eureka Prizes 2008
Nicky Phillips reports on the Australian Museum´s Eureka Science Prizes awarded this week.
Hagfish
Hagfish are blind, like big slimy eels. They predate fish and clean up the ocean bottom. Rebecca McLeod has looked at energy flows in New Zealand´s Fiordland ecosystems and discovered that hagfish actually derive energy from forests. Rain washes forest material into the water and, through bacterial decomposition, makes its way through the food chain to hagfish. Rebecca M ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-08-16 The curse of the black rats
Black rats were responsible for the death of 75 million people in the 13th Century during the Black Plague and today cost the US grain industry $19 billion a year. But black rats also happen to be brilliant at adaptation and survival. Feeling squirmish? Well the south Vietnamese aren´t, with their rat meat industry that creates 10, 000 tonnes of rat meat every year. While origins of the black rats come from South East Asia they have spread throughout every conti ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-08-09 Minke whales - mutual interest
Alastair Birtles reports on results of his study of whale-human interaction in the waters off Cairns and Port Douglas. The minke whales are quite curious and can swim around people for many hours. Northern Queensland is the only known area where this interaction takes place.
Green turtles in northern Australia
These turtles grow as large as one metre. They feed on sea grass and algae. The northern Great Barrier Reef green turtle population is the largest gro ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-08-02 Movement of biological hotpots
Biological hotspots are areas of high biodiversity. There are more species than in surrounding areas. For coral reefs, Indonesia is a hotspot. The region extends to Papua New Guinea and northern Australia. Over time hotspots move. It´s thought hotspots develop where tectonic plates collide, slamming into each other. They produce island arcs, volcanism and new habitats. Today, coral reef hotspots are being denuded by human activity.
WA biological hotspot rev ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-07-26 EuroScience Open Forum 2008
Wilson da Silva reports from the EuroScience Open Forum meeting in Barcelona.
Chinese archaeology and ancient civilisations
The Three Gorges Dam project in China has flooded vast areas. Rowan Flad describes some of the thousands of fossil specimens he collected before the waters rose. Now Rowan Flad is using archaeological data to create a picture of an ancient Chinese civilisation. In addition to land lost to flooding, rapid development means lands are being ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-07-19 Solar power in Europe
New technology uses solar energy to super-heat water which is used to drive steam turbines producing electricity. These plants are already in use in Spain. Test plants have been built in north Africa and the Middle East. Naomi Fowler reports on progress in other areas of Europe, including Italy where there is a strong political push for nuclear power. In many countries, current legislation assists existing electricity producers over new technologies.
Islands of the s ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-07-12 Mars Phoenix update
Jonathan Nally reports on results from the Mars Phoenix mission which is analysing the Martian soil and looking for signs of water on the planet.
Malaysian and Indonesian peat swamps drained and burnt for palm oil production
Most peat swamps are in the Indo Malaysian region. Peat a spongy wet mass and can support trees up to 70m in height. The environment is water-logged with high acidity, up to pH of 2. Dropped leaves don´t decompose. Cellular contents leak out, but ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-07-05 Music and the brain
It has become known as the universal language, but why is it that music—from Chopin to heavy metal—beguiles us so much? Brain scientist Oliver Sacks explores the origins of our love of music through cases he's written about in his latest book Musicophilia. And we hear from brain biologist Alan Harvey, who has also written about what connects our passion for music with our biology.
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Science Show - 2008-06-28 The DNA Files - Rewriting Heredity: Environment and the Genome
The Science Show presents another program in the series, The DNA Files. This week, Rewriting Heredity: Environment and the Genome. Our genomes are constantly at work, directing such vital functions as eating and breathing. Researchers are starting to understand that everything from diet to air pollution to stress has great influence on how our genomes function and what that might mean for our health. Beginning before birth, the ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-06-21 The DNA Files - Designing the Garden: Food in the Age of Biotechnology
Some say manipulating genes in plants and animals is the solution to world hunger; others say genetically modified organisms are neither safe to eat nor to grow. How do we understand what´s really on our dinner plate? This program, from Sound Vision Production in the United States, looks at the debates surrounding genetically modified food.
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Science Show - 2008-06-14 Voyage to the Southern Ocean
This week on The Science Show Margot Foster takes us on a voyage aboard the Aurora Australis, Australia's research vessel which works in Antarctica. We'll travel from Hobart to the deep Southern Ocean. On board we'll join scientists at work as they sample plants, animals and ocean water. Vast areas of Antarctic waters are described as a black hole of biodiversity knowledge. Very little is known about the ecology. The race is on to learn as much as possible, quic ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-06-07 Business leaders discuss climate
Scientists and leaders from business and government met in Canberra in May 2008 to discuss the need for action over climate change. Tim Flannery explains the urgency and suggests a radical solution. Tim Costello says climate change is causing poverty and undoing 50 years of development work in the world´s poorest countries. The group discussed the technologies available for saving energy, and the options ahead for reducing carbon output through carbon trad ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-05-31 Phoenix lands on Mars
After the crushing failures of previous Mars missions we now have a winner. Phoenix has defied the odds to land perfectly and will soon begin sampling the sub-surface of the Martian landscape. Jonathan Nally reports on the latest achievements.
Oldest fossil vertebrate embryo
John Long describes a 380 million-year-old specimen of an embryo connected by the umbilical cord to its mother. The discovery, a new species in itself, reveals advanced reproductive biology comp ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-05-24 Thylacine DNA resurrected
Genetic material from a 100-year-old pouch young thylacine or Tasmanian tiger at the Victoria Museum was taken and some genes were resurrected in a mouse. The last thylacine died in captivity in Tasmania in 1936. The specimens were stored in alcohol, so the DNA was preserved, although the genes were fragmented. The thylacine DNA was injected into very early mouse eggs. It gets incorporated into the mouse genome and is expressed, in this case, in the bone cells of ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-05-17 Hydrogen produced from water using aluminium and gallium
Jerry Woodall describes a method of producing hydrogen using water, aluminium and gallium.
Natural burial
Cremation in a coffin produces 160Kg of carbon dioxide. An alternative is cardboard coffins and biodegradable shrouds. Some are suggesting the establishment of burial grounds in forests, so that decomposing bodies eventually become sequestered into the wood of trees, rather than becoming gaseous carbon dioxide, adding to an alre ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-05-10 Research funding in Australia
Vicki Sara argues the Australian Research Council needs to have its funding quadrupled. She says the ARC´s situation is similar to it´s position a decade ago. Australia is losing people to better paying positions aborad. Post doctoral fellowships and PhD scholarships are offered at $20,000. This compares with marketplace positions easily 5 times this level. The result is people leave universities and move away from research. Tertiary education is in decline. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-05-03 Australian sea floor expands
Australia is 2.5 million square-kilometres larger following the United Nations recognising Australia´s claim to more of the sea floor around the continent. Australia doesn´t own the fish in the water, but it is responsible for the sea floor. Some trenches go to a depth of 10 kilometres below the surface. Tim O´Hara describes some of the animals which live at these depths.
The Loh down on science - Scent of a stripper
Sandra Tsing Loh discusses pheromones, h ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-04-26 Hydrogen production from algae
Conventional hydrogen production is expensive. A cheaper method involves using algae. The algae live in a series of ponds. Hydrogen is collected as it bubbles to the surface. An advantage is microalgae can be located on non-arable land and don´t compete with food production.
Nuclear fuel pellets found in a German garden
In February 2007, fuel pellets were found in the garden of a private home. Forensic science helped determine the material´s origin. They ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-04-19 Galactic clusters
Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound systems in the universe. Some are 1015 solar masses. That´s 1,000,000,000,000,000 times the mass of the sun. Christine Jones describes how and why galaxies cluster. One famous cluster is the bullet cluster.
Death Star
Dan Evans has found two galaxies merging. Each hosts a supermassive black hole. One is sending out a jet of particles. This contradicts the earlier idea that black holes only swallow matter.
Osci ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-04-12 Prospects for coral reefs
Charlie Veron looks at threats to the Great Barrier Reef. The crown of thorns starfish and sediment runoff pale compared to the looming threats of warmer and more acidic seas.
Ten Questions Science Can't Answer (Yet!)
Michael Hanlon discusses some of the questions in his book, questions which science has not yet come to grips with, or has chosen to ignore. He argues quite plausibly that dogs can have a sense of humour. He has some new suggestions for current dile ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-04-05 Green at work
Bernie Hobbs describes the ABC´s attempt to reduce consumption and waste.
Quantum dots and nanowires
Quantum dots are small particles of nanometre scale. They are typically 10 nanometres in diameters. The dots physical properties change at this level. Nanowires act as laser cavities. Just as with nanodots, physical properties at the nano scale are quite different. Applications include lasers for optical communications and night vision.
Gene Radar
Nano technology in en ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-03-29 Humans - built for long-distance running?
Daniel Lieberman is interested in what makes the human body look the way it does. His passion is running. There are features over our whole body which help us to run well. One is the toes. Short toes help running. Tendons in the leg act as springs. These evolved around 2 million year ago. The bum tenses with every stride, preventing the trunk from pitching forward. There are features in the spine, neck and head. These all make us good long-distance ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-03-22 One laptop per child
It was the ambition of Kevin Rudd during the last election and it is the plan being realised by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT. The only way Professor Negroponte can realise his dream is by having cheap laptops, costing $100, or eventually, less. How is this done? And what difference do these computers make in the villages of Africa, South America and Asia? Professor Negroponte, founder of the Media Lab at MIT and author of the bestseller Being Digital, talks to an audience ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-03-15 Solid light
Solid light describes a method of obtaining a phase transition in light. At a critical point light crystallises. This form of light was not predicted! It is a new exotic state for light. Despite some precursor experiments, the idea is to create a system where this effect can be observed. This would consist of a trap where a single photon reacts with a single atom.
Quantum Entanglement
Quantum entanglement is a strange telepathic link which allows particles to influence each o ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-03-08 Metal ions in proteins potential cause of disease
Copper-containing proteins play important roles in organisms ranging from bacteria and yeast to plants and animals. The objective is to understand the properties and biological functions of wild type copper-zinc superoxide dismutases (CuZnSOD) and to understand why mutant human CuZnSOD proteins cause familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Gut microbes
The average person has 1.5Kg of gut microbes. They affect biology and health. Abnormalit ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-03-01 Cell phone that reads
Ray Kurzweil describes a cell phone or mobile phone that can take a picture of text and then reads the text. It´s for blind and dyslexic people.
Virtual tools to teach children with autism
Children with autism had their communication skills improved when they played with virtual tools. Justine Cassell is trying to determine why children with autism can learn better from a machine than they can from people.
New approaches to gene therapy
In 1975 David Baltimore wa ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-02-23 Science under George W. Bush
David Baltimore explains why US President George W. Bush has been unkind to science. While enormous amounts of money have gone into defence, funding for health research has decreased by 10%. Scientific findings have been ignored. Scientists have been muzzled. Science has been little mentioned in the current presidential campaign.
Science funding in Ireland and the potential and ethics of animal cloning
Ireland has a plan to double the number of PhDs. The coun ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-02-16 Balancing Nature 4 - New Zealand
Census of Antarctic marine life
Michael Stoddart describes Australia´s involvement in the census of Antarctic marine life and what the census hopes to achieve. The census is designed to allow more accurate monitoring of the oceans which are thought to be changing quickly. The data may also help confirm whether the oceans of Antarctica are a biological hotspot, an area from where species are thought to evolve.
Mesothelioma diary 4
Jim Holmes continues t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-02-09 Balancing Nature 3 - The Philippines
Tasmanian Tigers
Catherine Medlock describes the Tasmanian Museum´s collection of young Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tigers. The museum has 5 of the nine specimens in existence. They were extinct on the mainland 5,000 years ago and were only found in Tasmania until more recent times despite reports that they are sighted from time to time. Nevertheless, there is no evidence they persist. The last Thylacine died in the Tasmanian zoo in 1936.
Tasmanian Mu ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-02-02 Balancing Nature 2 - Vietnam
Some of the richest and least explored forests on the planet are to be found in the mountainous heart of central Vietnam. Aside from recent discoveries of new orchids, butterflies, and snakes, several new mammal species have been discovered, such as the antelope-like saola, the large antlered muntjac and several doucs, or 5-coloured monkeys. Yet despite commitment for preservation by local authorities, this population of threatened species is at risk from illega ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-01-26 Balancing nature: Australia
Wiping out Australian species
While tracking the introduction of an African grass which has become a significant problem in the Northern Territory, ecologist Gary Cook discovered that from the 1920s to 2000, 84 species of grasses and legumes were intentionally introduced to Australia. In official documents he found that in some cases these introductions appear to have been part of a plan to wipe out Australian species: not just plants, but animals as well.
H ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-01-19 The Garrison Keillor of Chemistry
Peter Agre comes from the permafrosted precincts of the mid-Western USA celebrated every week on A Prairie Home Companion. He calls himself a kind of atomically charged Garrison Keillor His approach, though laconic, was good enough to score him a Nobel Prize - and he tells his life story in a Deakin Lecture of relaxed charm and scientific acuity.
Peter Agre - my life in science
Peter Agre´s public lecture My life in science traces the unusual story of hi ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2008-01-12 Saving Nemo
The speakers in today´s forum describe how the changing climate is affecting coral. We´ll hear about the effect of green zones where fish are protected. There´s the latest research on sharks and concerns for their future. And do fish larvae stay close to home or do fish protected in one region actually influence the populations of the same species in other neighbouring regions.
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Science Show - 2008-01-05 Meltdown
Daniel Grossman takes us to both ends of the Earth, to gain firsthand accounts of the latest research on the state of the world´s ice cover in this new era of climate change. He takes us on a global tour from the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, and the sea ice of the far north and south, introducing us to leading scientists in the field. We hear about the implications of melting ice the world over and it´s implications for the world´s ecosystems, its wildlife and ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2007-12-29 Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture
Are we missing out on the full benefits of science and technology because of outdated ideas about copyright and patenting? Could the key to feeding the world be locked up in a company fridge somewhere? Open-source software has transformed the internet, underpinning the phenomenal growth of Google, Ebay and YouTube. What can science learn from this revolution? In our rush to protect intellectual property, have we damaged our capacity to deliver solutions for ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2007-12-22 Mesothelioma diary part 2
Dr Jim Holmes, a rural psychiatrist, presents a second extract from a Science Show diary on what it is like to receive a diagnosis of mesothelioma. Since his first broadcast, two weeks ago, Dr Holmes has sung in the choir at the University of Sydney despite having only one working lung, has sung in a performance of Messiah, and has flown to Britain to say goodbye to relatives.
Krill
Krill are kept in tanks at the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart. The aim i ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2007-12-15 Corals and crustaceans in distress
A ten-year study has concluded and appears as the cover-story in the latest edition of the journal Science It brings together the two great threat to coral reefs; ocean warming and acidification. The threat is much greater than previously thought. Coral reefs only prosper if carbonate ions are present in the water at the right concentrations and this only happens with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at levels under 450 parts per million. Millions of other ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
Science Show - 2007-12-08 Mesothelioma diary
Jim Holmes is a doctor of psychiatry. He received the diagnosis of his mesothelioma while attending a patient. This is his story.
Lichens
Dolerite boulders as found in the Lake St Clair Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania can support up to 30 species of lichens. Lichens are a combination of alga and fungus. The fungus and alga never occur alone. They are only found together as a lichen. The combination is specific. The alga makes the food from photosynthesis. The ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
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