Wildlife trafficking, New quantum computers, Ancient bird beaks, Glassblowing.
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2017
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Conservation and conflict. A year long BBC investigation has exposed an illegal animal trafficking network stretching from West Africa to the Middle East and Asia. Traffickers have used fake permits to undermine international conservation efforts.
New developments in Quantum computing. Sussex University are building a new type of modular Quantum computer. We attempt to explain what Quantum computing is.
A Massive citizen science project to map bird beak evolution- using records from the Natural History Museum.
And the last scientific Glassblower at Imperial College gives us a demonstration of his craft.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | Well, hello there, this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4, first broadcast on the second of February 2017. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm Adam Rutherford. Small plug going in here. I'm off for a couple of weeks because |
| 0:16.4 | I've made a three-part series called Rise of the Robots. It's about the history and future of |
| 0:21.6 | artificial intelligence and robots, which starts way back in classical Greece and where this tech is going now. It's got loads of movie references in it from Blade Runner to X Mackinah, Jason in the Argonauts and |
| 0:34.3 | even the Smash aliens too. It's on next Tuesday the 7th of February at 11 a.m. |
| 0:39.4 | and then the next two Tuesdays after that and it's online forever and ever or until humanity |
| 0:44.8 | is enslaved by robots, whichever comes first, the rate we're going, maybe we |
| 0:49.7 | should welcome our robot overlords. Anyway, here's this week's inside science. |
| 0:53.4 | History and future science on the program today. We've got a 21st century update of what |
| 0:59.2 | Darwin started, the evolution of birdbeaks. Also we're looking at the subtle art of scientific glass |
| 1:05.2 | blowing and at the other end of the technological scale we usher in the new era of computing |
| 1:10.9 | maybe. Has the quantum computer finally arrived? |
| 1:15.0 | So now it becomes really interesting or really mad. |
| 1:18.0 | We hold individual charged atoms, we call them ions, |
| 1:22.0 | using electric fields in a tremendously awesome vacuum. |
| 1:26.0 | But first, this week the BBC published the results of a massive investigation into the illegal |
| 1:31.3 | trade in infant chimpanzees. |
| 1:34.0 | BBC Science Editor David Schukman led the investigation and helped uncover a global network that begins with the slaughter of adult chimpanzees, primarily in West Africa, and ends in a baby |
| 1:45.6 | chimp being bought as a pet. |
| 1:48.1 | Here's a clip from Newsnight, moments after the police and the BBC team discovered a baby |
| 1:52.2 | chimp being held in a crate in an unassuming |
... |
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