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24th Jun 2007
ARMAGEDDON! - The Science of Supervolcanoes, Meteor Strikes, Earthquakes and Arsenic
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This week a rabies-based Trojan Horse that smuggles drugs across the blood-brain barrier, why first-borns are brighter, progress with Parkinson's and a lunar telescope more powerful than Hubble. Plus in this week's ARMAGEDDON-focused show we look at supervolcanes, earthquakes and arsenic, find out why curtains are absolutely lethal and why a meteorite impact probably didn't dispense with the dinosaurs after all. Also, in Kitchen Science, we test the claim that tapping the top of a fizzy drink before you open it stops it spraying all over you...
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News
A UK-based company, LifeForce, are offering an "immune system backup" facility whereby they store white blood cells collected when an individual is healthy so that they can be reinfused to restore the immune system later in life following a disease, such as cancer, treatment for which...
Here’s some news that confirms what our Dr Kat has suspected for some time – the oldest child in a family is likely to have a higher IQ than his or her siblings. A Norwegian team found that first born children, or those who had lost their elder siblings and therefore become the oldest, scored ...
Harvard Scientists have tamed one of nature's nastiest pathogens by turning part of the rabies virus into a powerful therapeutic tool. Manju Swamy and his team borrowed the surface coat of the virus to produce the molecular equivalent of a Trojan Horse capable of smuggling drugs and other molecules ...
A study in the latest edition of the Lancet suggests that a new gene therapy might be a safe and effective way to stave off the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. A dozen patients with advanced Parkinson’s have been treated over three years in the small-scale trial, led by Andrew Feigin of the F...
Space scientists have come up with a way to make a moon-based telescope 1000 times more powerful than Hubble. But unlike traditional telescopes their's uses a liquid as its mirror. The idea relies on gravity deforming the liquid, when it is spun, into the perfect mirror shape. But the key breakthoug...
Kitchen Science
Does tapping the top of a can keep you safe from a fizz eruption?
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Interviews
Joel Veitch of Rathergood.com with his suggestion for measuring risk using the unit the 'Curtain'.
Janet Sumner discusses how the meteorite we're familiar with may have just been the straw that broke the dinosaur's back
We spoke to Peter Kelemen, who studies the earthquakes that originate deep in the mantle of the Earth
Michael Watts on how to search for arsenic in contaminated land, and the impact on people's health
This week, Chelsea and Bob update us with some news about the sound of muscles and treating depression with yoga.
Questions

Why use carbon dioxide for fizzy drinks?
We don’t use oxygen for this because oxygen is very good at oxidising things, and will make them go off. This will make your drink taste nasty. Carbon dioxide is basically a neutral chemical; it doesn’t react with much, so it shouldn’t make your drink taste bad.
Carbon dioxide is also acidic and when it's dissolved it makes carbonic acid, which gives a nice, lemony, sparkly taste in your mouth.

Why does adding salt to beer make it fizz?
Even when it looks like a drink has gone flat, there’s still a lot of carbon dioxide dissolved in it. Sprinkling salt or sugar in the drink will create lots of 'nucleation' sites on which bubbles can form, so some fizz will come back.

Could nylon create sparks?
It’s true that nylon football shirts will cause a spark, as will nylon underwear! The theory with mobile phones is that they emitt microwaves, which can interact with metal to induce a current and then possibly create a spark. We’re not sure this has ever been demonstrated with mobile phones, but we’ve all seen sparks from nylon clothes.
As to the likelyhood of a phone causing a fire compared to a nylon shirt causing a fire, we dont know!
So maybe we should ban nylon clothes at petrol stations!

Why shouldn't you drink before a CAT scan?
Contrast is a substance you inject (or administer) into people, which is usually something like Barium or Iodine (hopefully you wouldn’t inject Barium – it’s not very nice) these have big nuclei which scatter x-rays. They circulate in the blood stream and if you have a cancer or something, the blood vessels which supply cancer are leakier than blood vessels supplying healthy tissue, so you tend to get a build up of contrast agent in the abnormal area.
When the scanner comes on, the x-rays go right through normal, healthy tissue, but where the contrast is they get scattered and soaked up. This means they don’t get through, and this makes the tumour or abnormality glow up which lets you pinpoint areas of abnormality using the contrast agent.
Simply put, it makes areas of damage easier to see.

Why do you jerk when asleep?
This is called a Hypnic Jerk. When you go to sleep at night your brain paralyses your body to stop you acting out all your dreams. It would be dangerous to act out everything that happens in your dreams, especially if you were running or fighting, not just for whoever shares your bed, but also for yourself. It’s thought that this ‘sleep paralysis’ evolved when we slept in trees, as acting out your dreams whilst sleeping high up in the branches would be even more dangerous than doing do while tucked up in bed!
As this system kicks in, you can sometimes have these hypnic jerks, where all the muscles contract suddenly and violently. For some reason, these are often associated with dreams of falling.
It will do this, and I think it is because the impact is absorbed by the drink spinning rather than shaking and going turbulent which tends to mix in ...
- 29th Jun 07
excellent, cheers dave....
- 30th Jun 07
Dave, re, kitchen science. Is this also the reason why drink machines drop your can on it's side, to dislodge some of the bubbles?...
- 5th Nov 09
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