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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Leading Edge brings you the latest news from the world of science. Geoff Watts celebrates discoveries as soon as they're being talked about - on the internet, in coffee rooms and bars; often before they're published in journals. And he gets to grips with not just the science, but with the controversies and conversation that surround it.
radioscience@bbc.co.uk |
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LISTEN AGAIN 30 min |
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PRESENTER |
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"If what interests you are new and exciting ideas, it's science you should be turning to. And whether it's the Human Genome Project or the origins of the Universe, Leading Edge is the place to hear about them."
Geoff Watts |
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PROGRAMME DETAILS |
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New-born babies
It's long been known that smaller-than-average babies tend to experience more problems during labour, are more likely to suffer complications during their development, and have a higher rate of diabetes and heart disease during adult life.
Why those babies have grown more slowly during their time in the womb is much less certain. Scientists at Cambridge University think they may have solved one of the mysteries of size at birth. They've compared the weight of new-born babies with the concentration of a protein found in their mothers' blood. Geoff Watts talks to Professor Gordon Smith about the team's findings reported in this week's Nature magazine.
It seems that there's a sort of genetic 'battle of the sexes' that goes on in the womb. In particular, one of the chemical signals that encourages the unborn child to grow, an insulin-like growth factor called IGF2, is controlled by a gene from the father. It's in his interest to produce bigger, healthier babies. The mother, however, needs to limit the babies' growth to ensure her reproductive health for future children. In experiments with mice, researchers at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge turned off the paternal IGF2 gene. The baby mice resulting were underweight, proving that there really is genetic conflict between the parents. Geoff Watts talks to Miguel Constancia of the Babraham Institute, who has been studying this system in mice.
World's First Cancer Vaccine
The world has already seen the first successful anti-cancer vaccine in action which is also one of the most widely used jabs on the planet - and few people realise it. This is how Professor Baruch Blumberg, Director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute described the Hepatitis B vaccine last week at the launch of his autobiographical book, Hepatitis B: The Hunt for a Killer Virus. His vaccine, first commercialised two decades ago, is successful in preventing infection with the Hepatitis B virus and since the virus is linked to about 85 per cent of cases of liver cancer it should be "effective as a vaccine that prevents this common and deadly cancer". Geoff Watts asks Prof. Blumberg about the evidence for the vaccine's cancer-fighting efficacy and the intriguing association between human and virus.
Robo World Cup 2002
There's another football world cup going on this summer in Japan that doesn't involve the skills of Beckham, Zidane or Figo. Its stars don't have to worry about broken metatarsals or groin strain. Many of them don't even have legs or feet.
The competition is the 6th Robo Cup. Geoff Watts meets the players - including humanoid robots Priscilla and Elvis - and their trainers and discovers that RoboCup has a serious aim - to promote research in the area of intelligent robotics.
Fossil finds
About 530 million years ago, so fossil hunters would have us believe, there was an explosion - the Cambrian explosion, an explosion of life. Before then, the sea was full of algae and bacteria ant a few soft bodied creatures resembling worms and jellyfish. But now, 15 million years older than expected, Cambridge scientist Rachel Wood, working in Namibia, has discovered fossils of large, complex animals resembling corals, up to a metre across. And they have a complex internal skeleton of calcium carbonate. So perhaps the Cambrian explosion was not so sudden after all. Maybe complex animals have their origins in the Pre-Cambrian. |
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