Genetics and privacy, Global plastic, Great Ape Dictionary, Ocean Discovery X Prize
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 July 2017
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Should our genomes be private? Professors Tim Hubbard and Nils Hoppe join Adam Rutherford to discuss concerns about data security and privacy of our genetic data. Once our DNA has been extracted, sequenced and stored as a digital file, what is done with it, who gets to see it and what say do we have in all this?
Back in the 1950's at the dawn of the new plastic age, its everlasting properties were a major selling point. Now, we're dealing with escalating plastic pollution and bulging landfill. But how much plastic are we dealing with? Dr. Roland Geyer has calculated the production, use and fate of all plastics ever made.
Chimpanzees are very communicative animals: they tend to use gestures foremost with vocalisation just to emphasise the flick of a wrist or a stretch of the hand. In an attempt to get a grasp on why, and how, we humans made the shift from gesture-led communication to talking, we need to see how well we can decipher our ape relatives. A new online study called the 'Great Ape Dictionary' wants you to have a go.
The bottom of our seas remains a mysterious other world. Yet, adventuring into the deep depths of the ocean is a major challenge, which is probably why only 5% of it has ever been explored - even though it covers more than 70% of our planet. So to start learning more about our own planet, the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is awarding a total of $7 million to teams that develop autonomous, unmanned vehicles to map and image the bottom of the seas. Dr Jyotika Virmani tells Adam why ocean exploration is so important, and why it tends to take a backseat to adventuring into space.
Presented by Adam Rutherford Produced by Fiona Roberts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Fladiated. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:25.0 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds hello you this is the |
| 0:30.8 | podcast version of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on the 20th of July 2017. |
| 0:36.8 | I'm Adam Rutherford 20th of July of course being the date in 1969 that men first worked on the |
| 0:42.4 | moon which is pretty cool. |
| 0:44.0 | Today we have the first biggest and only study that accounts for all of the plastic ever manufactured. |
| 0:50.0 | It's epic and not just a little bit scary and millions of tons of that plastic is at the bottom of the ocean still a mysterious location |
| 0:58.0 | The latest incarnation of the X-Prizes up and running and it's not into space. It's at the bottom of the seas to map it at an unprecedented |
| 1:05.5 | resolution. |
| 1:06.5 | And we're working out what ape gestures mean, adult content warning, we think a lot of the |
| 1:11.3 | gestures seem to mean sex. That's all coming out later but first this month the chief medical officer Dame Sally Davis |
| 1:18.3 | launched her annual report with a call for a revolution in the use of genetic information in the NHS. |
| 1:24.2 | The report was called Genome Generation, there's a link on the website, and it recommends that |
| 1:28.2 | DNA tests should be as routine as biopsies. |
| 1:31.8 | Now, last week we talked about what DNA can tell us about health |
| 1:34.8 | that's online or on the podcast but the other big concern is about privacy how and |
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