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BBC Inside Science

Moon dust; Electro-ceuticals; Soil and climate change; Dogs' tails

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2013

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 Mission, tells her that understanding the make-up and movement of lunar dust is vital to ensure humans can work on the Moon in the future.

Electroceuticals is the new research area for medicine, tapping into the electricity transmitted through the vast network of nerves that run throughout our bodies. Kerri Smith reports on how the body's natural wiring could become a valuable tool for treating organs affected by disease. Glaxo Smith Kline has just invested £30 million into electroceuticals and researchers in labs around the world are working on devices that could "plug" into troubled organs and correct the electrical signals that have gone awry.

The impact of man-made climate change tends to focus on the things we can see, like shrinking glaciers or the weather. But a study published in Nature this week by a team in Spain, focuses on the impact underground, on the make up of the soil in a sizeable part of the earth's land, the drylands. The impact of increasing aridity is dramatic, affecting the delicate balance between nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus, with serious implications for soil fertility. David Wardle, Professor of Soil and Plant Ecology at the Swedish Institute of Agriculture, tells Lucie Green that this important new study spells out the risks when delicate chemical balances are upset.

Oceanographer, Helen Czerski, revealed her instrument, a giant buoy, on Inside Science's Show Us Your Instrument slot in the summer. This week, Helen is launching the buoy into the stormy seas South of Greenland, and Inside Science listeners are being called on to come up with a name ! Bob anyone ? Or Lucie's suggestion, Buoyonce ?

Dogs wag their tails more to the right when they're happy and relaxed; more to the left when they're anxious. Georgio Vallortigara, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Trento in Italy has now shown that asymmetrical tail wagging actually means something to other dogs.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Cladie Aide.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds hello this is the

0:31.0

BBC Inside Science Podcast and I'm Lucy Green.

0:35.0

Terms and Conditions are at BBC.co. UK.

0:38.0

In today's program, how medicine is joining the electronic age.

0:45.0

It is what people say it is. It is bionic man type of stuff.

0:49.0

It is a daunting task, but I believe we can get there.

0:52.0

Roll over conventional drug treatment,

0:54.0

Electro-Suticles is the new kid on the block.

0:57.0

We'll be visiting drylands where it's not the lack of rain that's the problem,

1:01.0

but the soil fertility. I'll learn more about

1:04.8

how dogs inadvertently reveal their emotions and we need you to help us find a name

1:10.5

for Inside Science alumni Helen Chersky's new boy.

1:14.0

We will basically throw the boy over the side in a controlled manner obviously and then we'll let it go.

1:21.0

As we speak Helen and her boy are in a ferocious storm just off the coast of

1:25.3

Greenland. But first, NASA has gone back to the moon with a robotic spacecraft that

...

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