Chemical weapons; Crowd-sourcing weather; Fingerprint ID; Dino drill
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Syria agrees to destroying its chemical weapon stocks, Adam Rutherford looks at how you solve a problem like Sarin. Dr Joanna Kidd from King's College London gives us a potted history of chemical weaponry.
Environmental toxicologist, Prof Alastair Hay, from Leeds University has worked on chemical warfare issues for four decades. In the 1990s, he identified mustard gas and sarin residues from soil samples in Iraq, confirming their use by Saddam Hussein. He talks to Adam about the challenges of destroying chemical weapons in Syria.
Reporter Roland Pease looks at a new phone app, OpenSignal, which uses your smartphone's sensors to help improve weather models.
Today, London Underground workers are starting to boycott a new clock-in system, which uses their fingerprint for identification. Meanwhile, Apple fans are camping outside stores waiting to buy the new iPhone, which features a fingerprint scanner.
Adam talks to Dr Farzin Deravi from the University of Kent about how fingerprint identification works and whether it can be fooled with a gummy bear. Plus he asks technology journalist Kate Bevan if we should worry about the security issues surrounding biometric passwords.
Finally this week, Dr Pedro Viegas shows us his instrument - a dino drill. It's being used to uncover the Bristol dinosaur, a 210 million year old Thecodontosaurus.
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 Adam Rutherford and we are Inside Science from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:40.8 | Terms and conditions are in the usual place, BBC.co. |
| 0:43.8 | UK slash Radio 4. |
| 0:45.8 | Oh yes, they are. |
| 0:47.4 | This week we're all about the dacteloscopy, that is, fingerprint identification to you |
| 0:51.7 | and me, with all the hoo-ha about the new iPhone |
| 0:54.7 | using your dabs to unlock it we'll be looking at the science and the security issues |
| 0:58.6 | behind biometric IDs. While we're on our very smart phones, there's an app that inadvertently helps predict the weather, |
| 1:05.7 | and we ask another scientist to show us their instrument. This time, it's a dino drill. |
| 1:11.9 | But first, earlier this week, a long-awaited United Nations report on the Syrian conflict |
| 1:17.3 | concluded that chemical weapons were used in an attack on civilians in Damascus on August |
| 1:22.3 | the 21st. Now the use of chemicals in warfare |
| 1:25.5 | has a long and utterly ignoble history. As early as 600 BC, the Athenians poisoned Spartan |
| 1:32.0 | wells they retaliated by lobbing burning |
| 1:34.5 | sulfur pitch over the walls of Athens trying to fill the streets with toxic smoke. |
| 1:39.0 | Dr. Joanna Kidd is director of the International Center for Security Analysis at King's College London. |
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