Forensic science provision, optimal garden watering strategy, and a mystery knee bone

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A damning House of Lords' report into the provision of forensic science in England and Wales makes for uncomfortable reading for some but is broadly welcomed by those in the field. Prof. Niamh Nic Daeid, one of many who gave evidence to the Science and Technology Committee, gives her reaction and suggests how a combination of unsatisfactory regulation, profit and austerity pressures in a uniquely commercialised sector, and some surprising gaps in the science knowledge base has lead to a sorry situation. Spring has sprung and it's probably not too late to get the tomato plants in, but should you water them little and often, or more but less often? Madeleine Finlay reports from Wisley, where The Royal Horticultural Society's Janet Manning has set up a new experiment this year to answer that question. Janet is the first Garden Water Scientist at the RHS, and hopes to demonstrate that giving plants less frequent, but more generous, bouts of hydration encourages deeper root growth, building in resilience for those periods when water is harder to come by whilst also allowing gardeners ultimately to use less. Do you have a fabella? Or maybe two fabellae? Michael Berthaume, "Anthroengineer" at Imperial College London tells us about a curiously under-studied bone that some people have in their knees. Present in certain primates and quadruped mammals, but thought to have disappeared from human anatomy, it seems to have made a bit of a comeback in certain populations around the world over the last century or so. Quite why, quite how, and quite what it's for, seems something of a mystery.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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, listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. I'm B. C Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.
0:36.0	Hello You, This is Inside Science from BBC Radio 4.
0:39.0	First Broadcast on the 9th of May 2019, I'm Adam Rutherford.
0:42.0	Now we get lots of emails and letters and I do read
0:45.0	them all and respond where appropriate but I just want to highlight one of my favorites
0:49.2	from the last seven years that I've been talking to you on the wireless. Last week we talked at length about the
0:54.4	incredible new discovery of a jawbone found in Tibet from an extinct type of human that we call the
1:00.0	Denisovans. This email came from Andrew Dean from Cambridge University suggesting two things.
1:05.6	The first is that the Tibetan Denisovans might be some sort of Yeti prototype given its location.
1:11.5	Alas, we know so little about the anatomy of these people
1:14.0	that I'm overruling that one Andrew I'm afraid but his second suggestion I
1:17.9	shall be campaigning for henceforth. Andrew suggested naming the fossil Homo Mayuensis or something similar after Peter Mayhue
1:26.9	who died on the 30th of April this year as if you didn't know Peter Mayhue was the actor
1:31.4	who played tobacco the rookie in the Star Wars films, R.I. P. Chewy. Now on today's pod
1:36.9	it's May and time to get the garden ready for summer, which means
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.