- John Gamel
Leukaemia is a deadly cancer of the blood affecting over 250,000 people every year, many of which are children. It isn't caused by an infection or virus, but by uncontrolled proliferation of the victim's own cells. How do you poison the cancerous cells without destroying healthy tissue? Professor John Gamel explores the history of the search for a cure...
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- John Aveson
Spinning hundreds of times per second and carrying a load equivalent to the weight of a family car, often at temperatures approaching the melting point of the metal, the blades in a modern jet engine have to withstand what is arguably one of the harshest environments any engineered material must face. So what are the substances that can rise to this challenge, and how do they beat the odds? To find out, materials scientist John Aveson explores the science of the superalloy...
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- Jeff Zilahy
The digital world is all around us, and is becoming evermore layered and integrated into our lives. Technology, computing, the Web and mobile phones, to name but a few, are now accepted parts of our lives, but are not all that well understood. Jeff Zihaly introduces the maths behind your computer screen...
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- Ayan Bhowmik & Harshal Mathur
The inside of a modern aircraft jet engine is a harsh and complex environment, but the drive for ever more powerful and efficient engines means conditions are getting even harsher. Hotter engines are more efficient, so temperatures are going up! Our present day materials are already at their limit, so the heat is on to find the next generation of high-performance metals...
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- Chris White
Plants and animals seem worlds apart, and indeed in many ways they are. Plants don’t eat anything more substantial than carbon dioxide, don’t move, and even the way they grow and develop is vastly different to us. But despite these differences, in important ways, we are more like plants than we realise, you just have to think about it...
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- Richard Lomax
Southern right whales live in the southern oceans that surround Antarctica. In the winter, they move north, settling in the warmer waters around Argentina, Australia and South Africa. Although a major tourist attraction, very little is known about these majestic sea mammals. Richard Lomax, a keen diver and snorkeller from South Africa, tells us about one of his encounters with this elusive whale.
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- Rheanna Sand
Rheanna Sand gives us an insight into how deadly toxins can be used to serve, rather than to harm, humans. She takes a closer look at toxins in neuroscience reasearch and in the development of antivenom...
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- Anna Khot
Honeybees are being trained to detect drugs and explosives, sometimes at concentrations equivalent to a single grain of salt dissolved in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But how and why are they being trained? Anna Khot finds out...
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- Nicola Davis
Lise Meitner’s name is to many an unfamiliar one, occasionally found somewhere amid the pages of a text on nuclear physics and seldom with great acclaim. In truth Lise Meitner was the mother of nuclear fission explaining the process by which atoms may be split to release huge quantities of energy – knowledge which has been harnessed to develop both nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs.
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- James Byrne
Microbial warfare is constantly happening all around us, and often humans can reap the benefits if the right bacteria are fighting our corner. One such species, Photorhabdus luminescens, harbours a secret weapon...it glows...
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