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BBC Inside Science

Antarctic Invaders; Patents; Longitude Challenges for Water and Antibiotics

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2014

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Antarctic Invasion Antarctica is the most pristine place on Earth, having only been visited by humans in the last 200 years, and being tens of thousands of miles from the nearest land. But these days, around 40,000 tourists and hundreds of scientists visit the Antarctic every year, and with them come stowaways in the form of bugs, beetles and plants. As a result, the ice -free areas of the Antarctic are at severe risk of invasion. Is it too late to do anything about it?

Longitude Prize: Water How can we ensure everyone can have access to safe and clean water? Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. 44 per cent of the world's population and 28 per cent of the world's agriculture are in regions where water is scarce. The challenge is to alleviate the growing pressure on the planet's fresh water by creating a cheap, environmentally sustainable desalination technology. London's Becton desalination plant is expensive to run, and so used for emergencies only. Marnie Chesterton meets some Danish chemists using membranes from nature which could help make salt water drinkable, without the energy requirement of current technology.

Patents in science European Inventor Award winner Christofer Toumazou explains his invention - a USB microchip that reads a patient's DNA. He tells Adam Rutherford how the patent system has protected his ideas.

Longitude Prize: Antibiotics Dame Sally Davies explains why, in an era of growing antibiotic resistance, it's important to have a cheap, easy-to-use test to identify bacteria. Muna Anjum from the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency is working on identifying those resistance genes in certain bacteria. Paul Freemont's team at Imperial College is using synthetic biology to build a device that can detect specific bacteria - precisely the sort of work that might answer the Longitude Prize's challenge.

Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

0:04.7

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

0:08.5

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

0:18.0

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

0:24.6

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

0:29.7

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

0:36.0

Hello You, this is Inside Science from the BBC first broadcast on the 19th of June 2014.

0:42.4

I'm Adam Rutherford.

0:43.6

We've a packed show as ever with only a tiny bit of football.

0:47.4

But here's a juicy fact for you.

0:49.2

The greatest ever power surge the National Grid ever recorded was just after Chris Waddell blasted

0:55.4

that penalty over the bar against Germany in Italian 90. So very English of us to

1:00.6

respond to that travesty with I might just pop the kettle on.

1:04.5

Terms and conditions at BBC.co. UK.

1:09.2

This week we talk to the European Inventor of the Year.

1:11.8

He put DNA onto microchips for instant diagnosis of genetic

1:16.4

disease. Clean drinking water and the rise and rise of antibiotic resistance, these are the last two longitude challenges, one of which will

1:25.8

be selected by you, the public, to be the grand scientific contest for our age.

1:31.2

And if you're trying to avoid the World Cup, we've got a bare minimum. Just 90 seconds of

1:35.7

build up at the very end of the programme. But first, Invasion. A couple of weeks ago we spoke of

1:41.5

luminous scorpions and the ever spreading Budlier, alien species invading

1:46.1

the UK.

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