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How the residents of Mukuru in Nairobi are trying to tackle the growing health problems caused by particulate air pollution.

Most Login Attempts are Criminal
90% of retail attempts are hackers and not genuine customers - that's according to a new report by cyber security firm Shape Security. The airline and consumer banking industries are also at risk with 60% of login attempts coming from criminals. Shuman Ghosemajumder, CTO at Shape Security is one of those behind the report and he explains more.

Arctic Weather
Physicist Helen Czerski and 40 colleagues are now aboard the Oden, a Swedish icebreaker and scientific research vessel that set sail earlier this week. They are en route to spend a month anchored to arctic sea ice to elucidate the mysterious behaviour of arctic weather. Before she set off she gave Adam Rutherford a preview of the research trip.

Fatal Cosmetic Surgery
The number of people paying to have cosmetic surgery in the hope of enhancing their appearance is on the increase in many countries. Colombia now carries out over half a million cosmetic surgery procedures annually, and has become a popular destination for medical tourism due to its competitive prices and many excellent surgeons. Yet in recent years there has been a proliferation of illegal so-called ‘garage clinics’ and a growing number of cosmetic surgery-related deaths of both tourists and locals. A bill proposed in Congress to improve the safety of cosmetic procedures has recently sunk. However with the inauguration of a new president in August - whose party previously supported the bill - campaigners are not giving up hope. Theo Hessing went to Cali in Southwestern Colombia to investigate.

Drought and the Mayans
Drought was the reason for the demise of the Mayan civilization. Scientists have been analysing ancient lake sediments on the Yucatan Peninsular in Mexico to determine the extent of the dry spell that caused catastrophic crop losses, which contributed to the demise of the Lowland Classic Mayan civilization.

Phubbing
Have you ever heard of phubbing? It’s a new word that’s made it into Australian dictionaries and means snubbing someone by paying more attention to your phone than to them. It’s a familiar situation; you go and meet someone, they get a text and soon they’re checking their emails and every other social media app, while you sit there waiting. After a particular experience of his own, the researcher Varoth Chotpitayasunondh decided to carry out research into the psychology of phubbing and its effects on social interactions. His study was recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Why Does History Repeat Itself?
Teenagers are known for ignoring their parents’ advice, but is this reputation for rebellion well-founded? If so, is rejecting the advice of previous generations and treading our own path an important part of what it means to be human? Are we successful as a species precisely because of our questioning natures? Listener Hans started pondering these questions after his own adolescent children repeatedly ignored his nagging. Many animals simply follow in their parents’ footsteps – so what makes human children different? Marnie Chesterton and a panel of experts look at the science of taking advice and making decisions, finding out how human curiosity and exploration compare to other animals, learning the best ways to give and take advice, and seeing whether we’re more likely to trust artificial intelligence than the wisdom of our elders.

Picture: A schoolgirl walks past smoke emitted from a dump in the city of Port Harcourt, Nigeria Credit: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

The Science Hour was presented by Marnie Chesterton with comments from Jason Palmer.

Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

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