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Science In Action: 14/07/2011

14/07/2011

BBC World Service - Science In Action, 14/07/2011

How well can climate science predict droughts, like the one gripping East Africa?

The science of drought prediction; Executive stress in baboons; Gray Whale decline; Edison's talking doll; Does the internet change the way we remember

Predicting Drought
Severe drought in the horn of Africa has led to crop failures and food shortages. Ten million people are at risk of starvation.  So can science help to better predict these events and help mitigate these disasters?  Dr Bradfield Lyon is a research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society based at Columbia University in the United States.  He explained the east African rains can be influenced by events as far away as the Pacific Ocean, where climate flip flops between El Niño events and their opposite states, the La Niñas.


Tough at the top
These days, the expression "it's tough at the top" is usually used ironically.  But it turns out that being a top ranking, or alpha male could be a lot more stressful than we realised, particularly if you are a monkey.  Researchers have just published work involving a nine year study of baboon populations in Africa.  They found that alpha males have higher levels of stress hormones and lower levels of testosterone than males ranked below them.  So could the same hold true for humans? 


Gray Whales
Gray Whale populations are seriously threatened by Russian oil exploration.  That is according to scientists at the International Whaling Commission annual meeting. Grays exist in two parts of the world - along the west coast of North America the population is robust and healthy.  But those near the Russian island of Sakhalin, is critically endangered.  Oil and gas exploration as well as fishing is to blame.


Twinkle Twinkle
Scientists managed to recover the sound from what is thought to be the earliest ever talking doll – 123 years old, singing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.  It was recorded by Thomas Edison himself, and probably has not been heard since his lifetime.  We find out how this recording was made. 


It's the internet, stupid
Are we becoming too reliant on search engines?  Do we depend too much on the internet to remember things for us?  An experiment just published in the journal Science shows that when people did not know the answers to questions, their first thought was to use their computer to look it up.  Professor Betsy Sparrow from Columbia University in the United States says rather than remember things ourselves we are basically outsourcing our memory to a sort of external storage.

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