Autonomous cars, Bees and neonicotinoids, Marden Henge, Royal Society Book Prize
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ford has just announced that by 2021 it's going to have a driverless car on the road with no steering wheel. It sounds ambitious, since it is the intermediate stop on the road to full autonomy that's raising some of the big research questions at the moment. How can drivers enjoy the reduced workload of automation whilst still being alert enough to take control if something goes wrong? For a drive of the future, Gareth Mitchell went to Southampton University's simulator facility for automated vehicles to meet Professor of Human Factors in Transport, Neville Stanton.
Neonicotinoid pesticides have been used widely in protecting the UK's vast acreage of oil seed rape. Research out this week claims there is a link between 'neonics' as they're known, and waning numbers of bees - with the worst affected populations declining by a third. The study has grabbed the headlines because of its scope - 18 years' worth of observations in the countryside. But how much is the link a cause for concern? Researchers Ben Woodcock and Nick Isaac of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology discuss the results.
Nestled in the Vale of Pewsey, Marden Henge is an artificial mound considered by archaeologists to be one of the best of the area's neolithic monuments. It represents the missing link between the stone circles at Stone Henge and Avebury. Teams from Reading, Historic England, and other volunteers, have been digging there this summer. Roland Pease has been along to meet them.
And we've the next nomination in this year's Royal Society Science Book prize shortlist: Tim Birkhead's new book, The Most Perfect Thing, all about bird eggs. It covers how they are made, why they are the shape they are, where their patterns come from and much more.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone thanks very much for downloading this week's edition of Inside Science |
| 0:04.0 | formerly a radio program that went out on radio for on Thursday the 18th of August 2016 and |
| 0:09.7 | uh... no before you ask i am not Adam. Adam Rutherford, it's Gareth Mitchell here, |
| 0:13.7 | standing in for the next four weeks |
| 0:15.7 | whilst Adam enjoys his holiday, |
| 0:17.2 | so I get to hang out with you and talk about science, |
| 0:19.4 | which is nice, well for me, hope it will be for you. |
| 0:22.0 | I do feel a bit like an incoming supply teacher so don't play me up too much |
| 0:25.7 | and in fact why don't you talk to me anything that you've heard on the program where you want to talk about in a |
| 0:29.6 | scientific context would love to hear from you I'm'm on Twitter, it's at Garith M, can't be much easier than that, can it? |
| 0:36.0 | Gareth M on Twitter and that might give me something to talk about in the pod intro next week. |
| 0:41.0 | As for this week then, this is all I have. 30 minutes-ish of |
| 0:45.6 | fantastic science view including passionate people past and present this week |
| 0:51.1 | including a history of obsessive bird egg collectors whose insights |
| 0:55.6 | into what pops out of birds have become the subject of one of the titles on the Royal Society book |
| 1:01.2 | prize shortlist. But passions apply to the bees as well as the |
| 1:05.2 | birds and nearly 20 years worth of loving observations, mainly by amateur |
| 1:10.3 | enthusiasts of wild bees, have now ended up at the center of a major new |
| 1:14.8 | study on the effects of widely used pesticides and yet more enthusiasm is |
| 1:20.0 | breaking out amid archaeologists amateur and professional at the Neolithic site of Modern Henge. |
| 1:27.2 | Along with people tend to be an awful lot of animals and they leave traces in geochemistry. |
| 1:32.9 | So we've taken samples across this causeway, |
... |
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