BBC Inside Science Folgen

Global experts in DNA identification are flying to the Philippines to assess whether they can help families to determine, beyond doubt, which of the hundreds of victims of Typhoon Haiyan are their relatives. The International Commission on Missing Persons in Sarajevo used DNA matching to identify the thousands killed in the former Yugoslavia and has since helped in conflict zones around the world. Now, working with Interpol, scientists from the ICMP are called on to assist in victim identification after natural disasters as well, and head of forensic services, Dr Thomas Parsons, tells Adam Rutherford that a team will be sent to the Philippines on Monday.The enormous ash cloud following the 2010 eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokell, grounded aircraft across Europe for more than a week and caused unprecedented disruption. Dr Fred Prata has invented a weather radar for ash, and off the Bay of Biscay, his AVOID infra red camera system, the Airborne Volcanic Object Imaging Detector, has just been tested after a ton of Icelandic volcanic ash was dropped by aeroplane into the sky. From France, Dr Prata describes the experiment and Dr Sue Loughlin, Head of Volcanology at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, tells Adam how Iceland has become the scientific "supersite" for seismic research.Show Us Your Instrument: Dr Glenn Gibson at the University of Reading with his Robo gut, a full-working model of the human large intestine.Liverpool University's Dr Julian Chantrey, and his PhD student have spent the past 4 years monitoring red squirrels in the Sefton area. Out of the 93 they trapped and blood tested, 5 had antibodies for the normally-deadly squirrel pox, suggesting they had contracted the pox and survived. It's early days but this could mean that reds are developing a level of resistance to the squirrel pox, like rabbits have to myxomatosis. We could be seeing evolution by natural selection in action.Producer: Fiona Hill.

A hundred thousand Britons are being asked to donate their sequenced DNA, their personal genome, to a vast database on the internet, so scientists can use the information for medical and genetic research. The Personal Genome Project-UK was launched today and participants are being warned, as part of the screening process, that their anonymity won't be guaranteed. Stephan Beck, Professor of Medical Genomics at University College London's Cancer Institute and the Director of PGP-UK, tells Dr Lucie Green that anonymised genetic databases aren't impregnable, and that it is already possible for an individual's identity to be established using jigsaw identification. This new "open access" approach, he says, will rely on altruistic early-adopters who are comfortable with having their genetic data, their medical history and their personal details freely available as a tool for research. Jane Kaye, Director of the Centre for Law, Health and Emerging Technologies at the University of Oxford, describes the rigorous selection procedure for would-be volunteers.Scientists at Queen Mary University London and Imperial have created Good Vibrations by playing pop songs to solar panels. Exposing zinc oxide PV cells to noise alongside light generated up to 50% more current than just light alone. Pop and rock music had the most effect, while classical was the least effective genre.Thanks to the Russians' enthusiasm for dash-cams in their cars, the twenty metre asteroid that came crashing into the atmosphere above the town of Chelyabinsk, East of the Urals in February this year, was the most filmed and photographed event of its kind. Mobile phones and cameras captured the meteor, moving at 19 kilometres a second (that's 60 times the speed of sound) and the enormous damage caused by the airblast. The plethora of footage allowed researchers to shed light on our understanding of asteroid impacts and in a new study, published in Nature, Professor Peter Brown from the University of Western Ontario in Canada questions whether using nuclear explosions is an appropriate way to model these airbursts and whether telescopes could underestimate the frequency of these events.Seventh November this year is the hundredth anniversary of the death of Alfred Russel Wallace. As the Natural History Museum in London unveils the first statue of him, we ask why, as co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Wallace doesn't share Charles Darwin's spotlight. Dr George Beccaloni, from the NHM, explains to Lucie why Wallace deserves both glory and commemoration.Producer: Fiona Hill.

A NASA spacecraft the size of a sofa is currently orbiting the Moon, gathering information about the toxic perils of moon dust. Dirt from the moon is sharp, spiky and sticky and it caused enormous problems for early astronauts as Professor Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum tells Dr Lucie Green. Joining Lucie from NASA HQ in Washington DC, Sarah Noble, programme scientist on the LADEE Mission, tells her that understanding the make-up and movement of lunar dust is vital to ensure humans can work on the Moon in the future.Electroceuticals is the new research area for medicine, tapping into the electricity transmitted through the vast network of nerves that run throughout our bodies. Kerri Smith reports on how the body's natural wiring could become a valuable tool for treating organs affected by disease. Glaxo Smith Kline has just invested £30 million into electroceuticals and researchers in labs around the world are working on devices that could "plug" into troubled organs and correct the electrical signals that have gone awry.The impact of man-made climate change tends to focus on the things we can see, like shrinking glaciers or the weather. But a study published in Nature this week by a team in Spain, focuses on the impact underground, on the make up of the soil in a sizeable part of the earth's land, the drylands. The impact of increasing aridity is dramatic, affecting the delicate balance between nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus, with serious implications for soil fertility. David Wardle, Professor of Soil and Plant Ecology at the Swedish Institute of Agriculture, tells Lucie Green that this important new study spells out the risks when delicate chemical balances are upset.Oceanographer, Helen Czerski, revealed her instrument, a giant buoy, on Inside Science's Show Us Your Instrument slot in the summer. This week, Helen is launching the buoy into the stormy seas South of Greenland, and Inside Science listeners are being called on to come up with a name ! Bob anyone ? Or Lucie's suggestion, Buoyonce ?Dogs wag their tails more to the right when they're happy and relaxed; more to the left when they're anxious. Georgio Vallortigara, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Trento in Italy has now shown that asymmetrical tail wagging actually means something to other dogs.Producer: Fiona Hill.