Face Recognition, ‘Thug’ plants, Cancer Funding Inequalities, Feynman’s 100th birthday
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2018
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Facial recognition technology is on the rise and in some places used to fight crime. In the UK the police have been heavily criticised for falsely identifying people using the technology. But are their results really that bad? Professor Hassan Ugail tells Adam Rutherford that – though there is room for improvement – the results may not be as catastrophic as critics claim.
Wild flowers are being outcompeted by ‘thug’ plants on our roadside verges, a study by the charity Plantlife has found. Pollution from cars and poor management practices by local councils has meant that nitrogen-loving plants outcompete wildflowers. Dr Trevor Dines explains to Adam Rutherford what actions can be taken to help our verges regain their natural biodiversity.
A new study reveals that for every pound a female scientist receives for her cancer research a male scientist will get one pound and forty pence. This gender imbalance in cancer funding highlights wider issues around women in science and how funding councils operate. Adam Rutherford discusses the problem with chief scientist at Cancer Research UK, Karen Vousden, and Professor Henrietta O’Connor, who co-authored the study.
This week Adam Rutherford marks the birthday of one of the greatest of all physicists: Richard Feynman. Professor Jonathan Butterworth talks about Feynman’s legacy as a scientist and science communicator but also about his highly problematic views on women.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service. |
| 0:04.7 | Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests. |
| 0:08.8 | Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook. |
| 0:11.2 | Technology doesn't want to be good or bad. |
| 0:15.0 | It's in the hands of the creator. |
| 0:16.7 | It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room. |
| 0:20.7 | If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing. |
| 0:26.0 | Julie, at your service. |
| 0:28.0 | Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. |
| 0:31.0 | Hello You, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on the |
| 0:35.3 | 17th of May 2018 I'm Adam Rutherford now today for every one pound a female |
| 0:41.4 | cancer scientist receives in funding male researchers get one pound a female cancer scientist receives in funding, male researchers get £1.40. |
| 0:45.8 | A new study reveals a huge discrepancy in the amount of money we give to female and male scientists. |
| 0:52.4 | Perhaps not the most glamorous of locations but in give to female and male scientists. |
| 0:52.6 | Perhaps not the most glamorous of locations, |
| 0:54.7 | but incredibly important for biodiversity and ecology, |
| 0:57.7 | the decline of verges, |
| 0:59.9 | and what we can do to restore a healthy variety of plants |
| 1:02.4 | to the sides of roads. And on the |
| 1:04.0 | the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Richard Feynman |
| 1:07.0 | we take a look at the legacy of one of the great bongo-playing physicists of the 20th century. |
| 1:17.2 | I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and |
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