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They were the best northern and southern lights in decades, but why? And what’s next? We hear from astrophysicist Steph Yardley about the solar maximum, geomagnetic storms and atmospheric spectaculars.Also, the impossible heatwave in the Philippines made possible by global warming – the analysis of a continent-spanning climate extreme by the World Weather Attribution collaboration.Getting close up to raging tornadoes in order to fill in the big gaps that remain in the science of their development.And the tale of the lizard’s tail, and how it could lead to safer buildings in the future. (Photo: The aurora borealis, also known as the 'northern lights’, are seen over The Roaches near Leek, Staffordshire, Britain, May 10, 2024. Credit: Carl Recine/Reuters)Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Jonathan Blackwell

Could future blood transfusions be made safer by mixing in a new bacterial enzyme? Every year 118 million blood donations need to be carefully sorted to ensure the correct blood types go to the right patients. Prof Martin Olsson, of Lund University in Sweden, and colleagues in Denmark have published a study that suggests an enzyme made by bacteria in our gut could edit our blood cells to effectively convert type A, B and AB to type O. This would be a step towards a universal blood type that could be given to any patient. Papua New Guinea’s Naomi Longa is a “Sea Woman of Melanesia”. She works to train local women from the Kimbe Bay region of the Coral Triangle to dive, snorkel, navigate and use AI to monitor the coral reefs there. She is winner of this year’s Whitley Award, and tells us why it is socially and scientifically useful to get locals - specifically females - involved in conservation efforts there. Data scientist and roboticist Prof Daniele Rus of MIT has been using Machine Learning to decipher structure in a vast swath of Sperm Whale song data from Dominica. They have discovered a set of patterns and rules of context that seem to govern the way sperm whales structure their distinctive sets of clicks. The next step? See if we can decode any semantic content… Also, 200 years after Beethoven’s 9th symphony premiered, science says its composer couldn’t hold a beat. A cautionary tale of the hubris of genetic data miners, Laura Wesseldijk describes to Roland how she and her collaborators designed the paradoxical study to point out the limitations of finding any sort of “musical genius” genes with contemporary techniques. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Image: Two Sperm Whales, Caribbean Sea, Dominica. Credit: Reinhard Dirscherl via Getty Images)

As bird flu is found in US farm cats fed on raw cow’s milk, chimpanzees are observed eating infected bat dung instead of vegetables. There is a constant threat of infections crossing from species to us and also from species to other species, particularly because of what we do. That is, after all, what happened to start the pandemic.We hear about the ongoing struggles of the Chinese virologist who broke his instructions in China in order to share the first COVID genetic data.And a strange tale of how tobacco growing might provide bat viruses a path into other species.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-HolesworthImage: Cows on an American cattle farm (Credit: Adam Davis/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)