Wimbledon Grass Science
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We visit Wimbledon’s iconic Centre Court... but we’re not interested in the tennis, we want to know all about the grass.
Just how important is science to cultivating the perfect playing surface?
Also this week, we discuss the aims and ethics of human stem-cell-based embryo models in research after a new code of practice for the UK made headlines.
And we answer a listener question about whether white paint could help tackle climate change.
Send your burning science questions to [email protected]. Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Ella Hubber, Sophie Ormiston & Gerry Holt Editor: Colin Paterson Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about ignorance. I will die without having read |
| 0:08.2 | everything that was written in classical Latin. Because ignorance isn't simply the opposite of knowledge. |
| 0:14.7 | It's part of what it means to be human. |
| 0:17.5 | Just about every game I can think of involves ignorance. |
| 0:22.1 | There's no adventure without ignorance. There's no there's no narrative. |
| 0:25.0 | The long history of ignorance from Confucius to Kianan |
| 0:29.0 | with me Rory Stewart, |
| 0:31.0 | listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. Hello and welcome to BBC Inside Science with me Marnie Chesterton. |
| 0:53.0 | Anyone for tennis? |
| 0:55.0 | This week we go looking for science at Wimbledon. |
| 0:58.0 | Plus, should we paint City roofs white? |
| 1:01.0 | Stay listening to find out why. But before that I want to go back to the start. It was |
| 1:07.0 | the late 1990s when scientists managed to extract the first embryonic stem cells, ushering in a whole field of stem cell research |
| 1:16.1 | which offers enticing possibilities like cancer treatments and regenerating your own |
| 1:21.6 | organs. |
| 1:23.0 | We're some way away from most of the potential prizes of this technology, |
| 1:28.0 | and the route there involves investigating those very early stem cells |
| 1:32.0 | with the ability to become almost any part of you. |
| 1:36.0 | That research can be done using human embryos, which can be studied up to 14 days, |
| 1:42.0 | but this field is fast moving and many scientists |
| 1:45.8 | are now working on human embryo models. Tiny balls of cells that resemble |
... |
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