Most of us don’t like to dwell on our toilet habits, but this week Crowdscience has gone down the drain to discover what wastewater can tell us about our health.
It’s been more than a year since scientists across the globe started to track the spread of Covid-19, with help from home test results and hospital data. Marnie Chesterton investigates the latest t ... Show More
Jul 4
Can we harness solar energy from other stars?
Listener Dickson Mukisa from Uganda has been gazing up at the stars. But he’s not making wishes. He wants to know whether we can harness their energy, in the same way we do with our OWN star – the sun. After all, they may seem small and twinkly to us, but each one is a gigantic f ... Show More
26m 28s
Jun 20
How can we persuade more people to cycle?
Cycling is good for our health, good for the planet, and it can be an efficient way of moving around busy cities. But despite all the rational arguments for it, in most cities the number of people who get on their bikes is low.CrowdScience listener Hans wants to know whether it’s ... Show More
26m 28s
Jun 2021
Cov-Boost trial; SARS-Cov 2 infection in action; sapling guards; why tadpoles are dying
Scientists are now looking at the question of third doses of vaccines against SARS-Cov2, and this week the Cov-Boost trial was launched. It’s being run from University of Southampton and is going to be using seven different vaccines, some at half doses, in people over the age of ... Show More
30m 22s
May 2024
Can we get plastic waste under control?
As the UN tries to get a global agreement on plastic waste we hear from two delegates at the conference in Ottawa; John Chweya, a Kenyan waste picker, and plastics scientist, Steve Fletcher, discuss the impacts of plastic pollution and the possible solutions. Taylor Swift’s new a ... Show More
27m 44s
May 2022
The Ebb and Flow of the Tidal Power Revolution
This week, we begin with a disturbing medical mystery. Since the start of the year, almost 200 children worldwide have fallen ill with hepatitis—or liver inflammation—without any apparent cause. Most of the children are under five, and nearly half of the cases were in the UK. Vic ... Show More
43m 50s
Sep 2023
What makes a healthy river?
River health has captured the public imagination, particularly as overspills from sewers have been getting more attention in the media. But the condition of a river is so much more complicated than what flows into it from our water treatment systems. Agriculture, roads, how we us ... Show More
36m 11s