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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Quentin Cooper reports on developments across the sciences. Each week scientists describe their work, conveying the excitement they feel for their research projects.
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Contact Material World |
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LISTEN AGAIN 听30 min |
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PRESENTER |
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"For me science isn't a subject, it's a perspective. There are fascinating scientific aspects to everything from ancient history to the latest gadgets, outer space to interior decorating; and each week on The Material World we try to reflect the excitement, ideas, uncertainties, collisions and collaborations as science continues its never-ending voyage into the unknown".
Quentin Cooper |
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PROGRAMME DETAILS |
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Green mega-cities
The migration of people from the countryside to the city has led to a huge increase in the size and number of mega-cities.听 From next year the UN predicts that for the first time in history, more people will be found residing in cities than rural areas - requiring a new form of city. Engineers and architects are now beginning to wake up to the urgency of the situation.听 The Chinese city of Shanghai seems to be at the cutting edge of the debate, it is subsidising, for instance, the installation of 100,000 rooftop solar panels.听 The development of urban farming is also being expanded and so creating green spaces.听 There are also plans to recycle more waste, cut down on transporting products and limit soil erosion.听 And Shanghai has also announced the plan to build a green city in it's suburbs, to be called Dongtan.
Elaine Trimble from Arup, consultants for the Dongtan Project, and the architect, Bill Dunster, of ZEDfactory,听an organisation that aims to create architectural projects with听zero emissions, join Quentin Cooper to discuss how Shanghai and Dongtan could become the models for the green cities of the future.
High intensity light sources
Plans to construct Europe's most intense terahertz (THz) radiation source in order to further development of cancer research are underway at the University of Liverpool.听 Physicists will construct an ultra-high intensity THz beamline - a thousand times more powerful than current laboratory sources - and will attempt to use terahertz for the first time to destroy specially grown skin cancer cells.听 Terahertz is absorbed by water and cancer cells retain water, so the THz radiation should be consumed by the cell and kill it off at the source.
Terahertz radiation has also been used in the detection of concealed weapons, explosives and drugs, as it has the ability to penetrate a variety of materials such as clothing, paper, cardboard, wood, masonry, plastics and ceramics.听 THz can also pick up on vibrations and rotations of molecules and has been useful in identifying molecules floating in space.
Professor Peter Weightman, who is leading the Terahertz Project at Liverpool University, and Dr Brian Cox, an experimental physicist, of Manchester University, together with Quentin Cooper take a look at the uses of terahertz technology.
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RELATED LINKS
大象传媒 Radio 4 Science programmes
大象传媒 Science & Nature
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