UK science and the EU, Sex of organs, Artificial colon, Gorillas call when eating

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Britain faces a referendum on whether to leave Europe. Science, and scientists, often cross borders in collaborations, so what would the implications be for a British exit from the EU? The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee have an ongoing inquiry into how EU membership influences British science. Inside Science condenses the pertinent points.

The stem cells that make up our organs 'know' whether they are 'male' or 'female', and that this sexual identity could influence how they grow and behave. Dr Irene Miguel-Aliaga, at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre at Imperial College London, wanted to ask a very basic question: whether it is just the cells of the sex organs of a fully developed organism that 'know' their sexual identity, or whether this is true of cells in other organs too - and whether that matters. It was previously thought that non-reproductive organs are the same in both sexes, and function differently because of the differences in circulating hormones, but her new research suggests that cells know their sex.

At Birmingham University, chemical engineers have built a working prototype of an artificial human colon, the first of its kind. The colon does the last bit of moving your food out of your body, mixing it, squeezing the last few nutrients and excess water out of it. The team want to use it to measure drug delivery to the colon.

Talking with your mouth full is an unattractive trait, but for other, non-human, great apes it is a normal part of meal time. The noises recorded by a team at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology are from the silverback Western lowland Gorilla. Primatologist Eva Luef explains that this humming and singing during meal time is a way of signalling without wasting valuable eating time.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello you this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on the 25th of February 2016 I'm Adam Rutherford today amongst all the new research we're talking about we're beginning to discuss what the EU means for science in the UK and what a British
0:14.9	exit or Brexit as I simply refuse to say might mean for research, science and engineering.
0:21.2	We want to hear from you on this matter so do email us especially
0:24.7	if you are a working scientist or engineer BBC inside science at BBC.co.
0:29.2	UK for more information as ever it's on the website BBC.co.
0:33.2	UK slash Radio 4.
0:35.1	Talking with your mouthful is a horrid thing to do as I repeatedly tell my children.
0:39.8	But what about when you're a gorilla?
0:41.2	We've got the latest on food vocalizations in apes and a
0:44.5	little bit further down the digestive track we're inspecting an artificial
0:48.2	colon and while you might be a man or a woman or somewhere on that spectrum, new research is suggesting that organs might also
0:55.2	be sexually defined and strangely we're not talking about sex organs.
0:59.4	But first, it finally happened this week.
1:01.7	David Cameron called the EU referendum on the 23rd of June.
1:05.8	And after years of speculation the campaigning began in earnest and this is a topic of extreme relevance
1:11.1	to science. As we've said many times on this program, science is a uniquely international endeavor,
1:16.5	and academics up and down the land have immediately been drawn into the debates about the virtues
1:20.7	or otherwise of Britain staying in Europe. Here on BBC Inside Science the it is early days but in September last year the House of Lords Science and
1:34.7	Technology Committee launched an inquiry on the influence of EU membership
1:38.6	on UK science and since December they've been taking oral evidence from
1:42.2	the whole posse of experts,
1:44.0	and that's set to continue for two more weeks.
	...

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