Science Weekly Folgen

In a special episode recorded live at the British Science Festival, Madeleine Finlay and guests explore the question: will AI make a good companion? AI could give us new ways to tackle difficult problems, from young people’s mental health issues to isolation in care homes. It also raises challenging questions about the increasing role of tech in our personal lives. To explore these questions, Madeleine is joined by the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample; Tony Prescott, a professor of computational robotics at Sheffield University; and Dr Mhairi Aitken, an ethics fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and visiting senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London.. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod

Ian Sample talks to Dr Laura Pritschet, a postdoctoral fellow of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, about her research using precision scans to capture the profound changes that sweep across the brain during pregnancy. She explains what this new work reveals about how the brain is reorganised in this period, whether it could it help us better understand conditions like pre-eclampsia and postnatal depression, and why women’s brains have often been overlooked by neuroscience. And neuroscientist Dr Liz Chrastil whose brain was scanned, explains what the experience was like. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod

They were developed as diabetes drugs, then their potential for promoting significant weight loss became apparent. And now study after study seems to suggest that drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy could have all sorts of health benefits, leading some scientists to hail them a breakthrough that could transform many chronic diseases of ageing. But what’s the mechanism for these effects and is it caused by more than weight loss? The Guardian’s science correspondent Nicola Davis tells Madeleine Finlay what is known so far. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod