This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Richard Hollingham goes to the River Wandle in south-west London to find out how scientific research is helping to revitalise this heavily-used river; later he goes to Cambridge to hear about some of the hottest conservation topics for 2012.
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It's not often that science news goes viral, but when researchers dubbed a new species the 'Hoff Crab' more people than usual seemed to take notice! Sue Nelson braves a freezing research aquarium to find out about a host of new species discovered around hydrothermal vents on the Southern Ocean's East Scotia Ridge. Also, far away in the North Sea, the fishing fleets that ply the waters for cod are subject to some 750 separate regulations. But how well do they work? To find out what effect they have on decision-making at sea, fisheries economist Alison Little plans to spend time out with the fleet. Finally, Sue visits the University of Reading to learn about a new database of thunderstorms that will help improve storm predictions.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Sue Nelson goes to Birmingham to find out how the James Bond film Casino Royale and orang-utan conservation are linked; later she meets a scientist from the British Geological Survey to learn which parts of the UK power grid are most at risk during solar storms.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Sue Nelson goes to the Thames Barrier to find out how engineers use science to decide whether or not to raise or lower it, helping to stop storm surges from flooding London; while Richard Hollingham meets a scientist who developed a technique that reveals the colour of truly ancient fossilised birds.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Richard Hollingham talks to one of the scientists behind the discovery of the ozone hole to find why it's still there; how research on starlings on an island famous for its sweaters could help bird conservationists; and why forest fires in North America affect people thousands of miles away in Europe.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Sue Nelson visits the largest collection of venomous snakes in the UK to find out how researchers are developing antivenoms to help African snakebite victims; and what scientists are doing to understand why populations of the European shag are declining.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Hollingham meets scientists and archaeologists who are working to preserve one of the most important Neanderthal settlements in north-west Europe to find out how they lived; later on, he visits the local primary school to find out what schoolchildren make of the Neanderthals.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - how scientists find out about life in the oceans' deepest trenches; how identifying proteins from 50 milion year old reptile skin could help us store radioactive waste; and studying the effects of climate change in the Arctic.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - how hikers and walkers could be unwittingly changing the landscape by spreading alien species; what it's like to work as a marine biologist in the Arctic in temperatures of minus 40°C; and exactly how stable is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet?
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: in a geoengineering special edition, we take a closer look at some of the technologies we may have to resort to using to avert dangerous climate change.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, why scientists are working with the National Trust to restore the chalk grasslands around Stonehenge; how researchers are using satellites to study microscopic plants; and the etiquette of dining and bullying in baboons.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how scientists are using fish scales to figure out why the UK salmon population is falling; and how carbon dioxide emissions from power stations could be used to make household bricks.
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This week, why scientists are planning on drilling three kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet in one of the most ambitious exploration projects ever undertaken; and how worms that feed on dead whale bones at the bottom of the ocean may be distorting the whale fossil record.
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This week, why understanding rip currents at Perranporth in north Cornwall could help save lives; how exactly does carbon capture and storage (CCS) work and how can scientists be sure that carbon will be stored forever?
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, why weathermen are using a converted World War II bunker to monitor clouds; how thug species such as bramble, nettle and bracken can be just as damaging to woodlands as alien plants; and why scientists are going to Greenland to deploy a network of sensors in some of the country's glaciers.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - What UK farmers are doing to protect the country's vanishing bumblebees, butterflies and other pollinating insects; how scientists are trying to figure out how many types of microbes there are on our planet and why they all matter; and why birds are more amazing than we ever imagined.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - the cunning tricks the cuckoo uses to get another bird to do the parenting, why researchers are studying snow in Sweden, and how an improved radiocarbon dating technique may put a few scientists' noses out of joint.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, why removing some man-made coastal flood defences might not be such a harebrained idea, what it's like studying gas exchange in the wilds of the Southern Ocean, and, in what could be the first case of 'natural' geoengineering, how forests could be whitening the clouds right above them.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how a specially-designed twin turboprop research plane is helping scientists in a huge range of subjects from archaeology to ecology, and why a violent space storm could spell trouble for communications systems across the world. If you want to know how polar ice cover is changing, how much tree cover there is in the Amazon, or how fast a Greenland glacier is flowing, your best bet is get your hands on the latest satellite data. But what do you do if you can't measure any of these things from space, or if you want more detail than a satellite can provide? Sue Nelson goes to Gloucestershire Airport to fly on the Natural Environment Research Council's Dornier twin turboprop, a specially kitted-out research plane. Also, what would happen if there was a massive solar storm like the famous Carrington Event in 1859? The answer isn't good news, which is why satellite manufacturers, insurers and space weather scientists recently met at a conference in Rome to discuss how to cope with massive solar storms.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how last year's eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland gave scientists an unparalleled opportunity for research, and why sediment from rivers like the Thames can act like time machines to bygone eras. The volcano disrupted millions of people's journeys, but as the saying goes, every ash cloud has a silver lining. The cloud provided many scientists with an unprecedented opportunity to research volcanic ash in more detail than they could have dreamt of in a natural, evolving experiment. Also in this week's podcast, Richard Hollingham finds out that river sediment isn't just useless, brown sludge. It turns out that sediment is like a time machine, holding a wealth of information about the past. Chemicals around at any given time eventually build up in river sediments, revealing how the urbanisation of cities like London has changed over time.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how scientists plan to measure the Earth's magnetic field from space, why one researcher is in the frozen town of Churchill in northern Canada, and how the Chernobyl disaster still affects Northern Ireland 25 years on.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how the famous White Cliffs of Dover could be made of fish poo (at least partially), why one researcher is so interested in dead whales, and why the Japan earthquake was so powerful and devastating. Join Richard Hollingham and Sue Nelson to find out more...
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - how carbon capture and storage works and why it's here to stay, the effect of floodplains on water pollution, and how exactly do you measure the thickness of polar ice from space? A pub isn't an obvious place for a discussion about taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it in rocks deep underground, but the venue for this week's Planet Earth Podcast isn't any old pub. This pub is set into the sandstone rock in the centre of Nottingham and is the perfect place to demonstrate exactly how the technology works. Richard Hollingham visits Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem to see for himself. Finally, Sue Nelson gets the latest from two of the scientists behind CryoSat-2, a satellite mission launched exactly 11 months ago today to measure the thickness of ice at the poles, and monitor changes in Arctic ocean circulation.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - how tracking insects can help scientists forecast summer storms and floods, and the role one of Europe's key satellite missions played in the recent floods in Queensland, Australia. The huge Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric and Radio Research was originally designed to be used by astronomers. But now the Big Dish – as it's affectionately known among its users – is much more likely to be used by weather scientists. Sue Nelson meets some of the scientists behind this research to find out more. Later, we find out how one of Europe's most sophisticated scientific satellites– SMOS, or the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission – is getting on. The satellite recently took centre stage during the floods in Queensland, Australia, when it helped show the full extent of saturated soil in the region. But it doesn't just measure soil moisture levels; by measuring how salty the world's oceans are, SMOS also helps reveal ocean circulation patterns, letting scientists make more accurate weather forecasts.
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This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - how the Romans recycled glass, dinosaur colour, and what Europe's gravity mission tells us about ocean currents. Did you know that the height of the world's oceans can vary by as much as 200 metres? These huge differences depend almost entirely on very slight changes in gravity across the world. Sue Nelson goes to the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton to find out more. We also hear that even the Romans recycled glass. But were they being green, or did they have other reasons? Richard Hollingham goes to Norwich to meet the archaeologists with the answer. Finally, what colour do you think dinosaurs were? Until now artists have been free to paint them whatever colour they felt like. But not anymore – scientists now have a way of figuring out what colour they were. Richard goes to Bristol University to get the low-down from one of the scientists at the forefront of this research.
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In this latest watery-themed Planet Earth Podcast, Richard Hollingham hears how the underwater world isn't the soundless place you might imagine. From chirping, gurgling and snapping sounds from busy coral reefs to clicking sperm whales, scientists are finding that all sorts of marine life use sounds to find a suitable home, to find a mate, to avoid being eaten or to communicate. First up, we hear from a marine biologist from the University of Bristol who explains how manmade noise might not affect just whales and dolphins, but also much smaller creatures that live in and around coral reefs. Later, Richard meets a British Antarctic Survey scientist to find out how fossils of tiny marine creatures called bryozoans give us clues about when the West Antarctic Ice Sheet last collapsed. We also hear the strange clicking sounds sperm whales use to communicate with each other, and find out how very far leatherback turtles can swim.
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As the UK winter continues to bite, Sue Nelson tries to escape it all by going to visit a coral reef. Unfortunately for Sue, the coral reef is not in some sunny clime. Instead, it's an indoor coral reef at the brand new Coral Reef Research Unit at the University of Essex. Researchers are using the reef to look at the effects of ocean acidification on coral in a unique experiment. Sue meets David Smith and David Suggett from the Unit to find out exactly what they're up to. Later, Sue talks to Andy Morse from the University of Liverpool. Andy's an expert on the effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases. Sue finds out that as the climate changes and brings warmer and wetter weather, we might get more than we bargained for. Finally our correspondent in Antarctica – the British Antarctic Survey's medical doctor, Claire Lehman – meets a researcher who tells us how she finds out how the sea around the continent changes with the seasons.
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This is a special edition of the Planet Earth podcast, featuring some of our favourite audio diaries from the past year. We've got scientists using cannons to study geese in Ireland, researchers collecting mongoose poo in Uganda, Darth Vader impressions from beneath Antarctic ice and tiger leeches in a researcher's pants. In the first feature, Tim Cockerill from the University of Cambridge gives us an insight into studying insects in pristine rainforests of northern Borneo, describing some of the downsides. Next, Michael Cant, also from the University of Exeter tells us how cooperative – or not, as the case may be – Ugandan mongooses are. We then head down to the freezing cold waters of Antarctica to hear how British Antarctic Survey doctor Claire Lehman gets on when she joins the dive team.
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