Original version

BBC World Service Online

Unexpected Elements

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

The news you know, the science you don’t.

The news you know, the science you don’t. Unexpected Elements looks beyond everyday narratives to discover a goldmine of scientific stories and connections from around the globe. From Afronauts, to why we argue, to a deep dive on animal lifespans: see the world in a new way.

The Science Hour

Unexpected Elements: Sustainable Farming, Antarctic Architecture, Harmful Herring

The Clearest Image Of Planet Earth Ever Seen

27/07/2013

Sustainable Farming, Antarctic Architecture, Harmful Herring

BBC World Service - Unexpected Elements, Sustainable Farming, Antarctic Architecture, Harmful Herring

Marrying Genetic Modification with organic farming to secure future food production

Marrying Genetic Modification with organic farming to secure future food production
Building a home in Antarctica
The tiny particles of fish which cause big problems

Sustainable farming
Producing enough food to feed the growing population of the planet, in a responsible and sustainable way, is one of the largest challenges in human development. Vital nutrients are being taken out of the soil faster than they are being returned. Project Sunshine – a strategy developed by scientists in the UK sees a solution to feeding an increasing population in a greater use of human waste in fertiliser and marrying genetic modification with organic farming, two methodologies commonly seen as incompatible.

Antarctic architecture
It takes a special kind of soul to endure the Antarctic winter, but it also takes a special kind of building. Halley 6 is the first fully relocatable polar research station and became operational in February this year. It is a beautiful and weird set of buildings - imagine Thunderbird 2, and then string a few of them together like a humungous, robot caterpillar. The man behind the design is architect Hugh Broughton, and the whole project, he says, began on BBC Radio 4.

Harmful herring
Over the last decade, Dr Anna Dahlman-Höglund, an occupational hygienist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, and her colleagues have increasingly seen workers in the fish processing industry develop allergies and respiratory problems. To work out what is causing this, they visited some herring-processing factories and set up a study to evaluate the exposure of workers to airborne herring particles and other environmental factors. The results have just been published in the journal The Annals of Occupational Hygiene.

Forecasting earthquakes
Predicting earthquakes is notoriously difficult, but every time we have one of these violent events seismologists get a bit more information to help with future predictions. 
Roland Pease looks at what past earthquakes have taught us about making predictions – and also what they haven’t.

Photo: The Clearest Image of Planet Earth. Credit: Barcroft Media/Getty Images

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Unexpected Elements

Sustainable Farming, Antarctic Architecture, Harmful Herring

Genres

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service