BBC Focus Magazine

This week's guide to science on the telly and radio...

Sun 16 June

Operation Snow Tiger
BBC Two, 8:00-9.00pm

Liz Bonnin joins a team of scientists and cameramen to track down one the planet’s rarest and most elusive animals: the Siberian tiger. This week they discover an orphaned tiger cub, but have they rescued him in time?

Rise of the Continents
BBC Two, 9:00-10.00pm

Prof Iain Stewart tells the story of how our iconic continents ...

Image Credit: Airbus

An aircraft with a lace-like structure may not seem like the best way to fly, but it is one of a range of radical ideas about how we may travel in the future.

A model of the aircraft, designed by Airbus, was shown off at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh.

Taking inspiration from the human skeleton, the design is both strong and relatively lightweight.

This means it could, in theory, drastically ...

Image Credit: SPL

Human genes may not be patented, but artificially copied DNA can be claimed as intellectual property, the US Supreme Court has ruled unanimously.

The court quashed patents held by a Utah-based firm on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

The opinion said DNA came from nature and was not eligible for patenting.

The US biotechnology industry had warned any blanket ban on such patents would jeopardise huge investment in ...

Birdsong phone apps 'harmful' to birds, say Dorset experts

The "harmful misuse" of mobile phone apps that mimic birdsong can stop birds performing important tasks such as feeding their young, experts have said.

Dorset Wildlife Trust said visitors to Brownsea Island were using apps to imitate Nightjar calls to entice birds out so they could photograph them.

The RSPB said birds could be diverted from vital tasks and said people might be "devastated" if they ...

Old Opportunity Mars rover makes rock discovery
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News
No, they haven't found AC/DC on Mars but something almost as cool. ;)
And just consider that this little rover has been trundling about the Martian landscape for almost ten years now.

Nasa's ageing Opportunity rover on Mars has just made what may be one of its most significant discoveries to date.
The ...

China's latest manned space mission to launch June 11

(Reuters) - China will launch its next manned space flight on Tuesday, carrying three astronauts on a 15-day mission to an experimental space lab, the National Space Administration said, in the latest step towards the development of a space station.
The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft will launch from a remote site in the Gobi desert in China's far west at 5:38 p.m. (0938 GMT), Wu Ping, spokeswoman ...

This week's guide to science on the telly and radio…

Sat 8 June

Maiden Voyage: The First Woman in Space
BBC Radio 4, 10:30-11.00am

In 1963, the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space. It was a historic event, but the flight's details were kept secret during Soviet times, and still remain mysterious today. Lucy Ash travels to Russia in an attempt to track down the woman behind the legend. ...

The UK scientific community has issued a broadside to the government, warning it not to cut the science budget.

Ministers are due to announce their spending plans for the next four years on 26 June.

The public research budget was frozen when the coalition came to power in 2010, but inflation has eroded its value by 10% since.

Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, said that depressing funding still further would damage the ...

An "invisibility" time cloak which is able to hide events in a continuous stream of light has been developed by scientists.

The cloak works by manipulating the speed of light in optical fibres and means any interaction which takes place during this "hole in time" is not detected.

That is, a beam of light can be manipulated along its path.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

The research builds upon a time cloak ...

Artist's impression
Image Credit: X.NI

A mouse-sized fossil from China has provided remarkable new insights into the origin of primates.

At 55 million years old, it represents the earliest known member of this broad group of animals that includes humans.

Scientists have called the diminutive creature Archicebus, which roughly translates as "ancient monkey".

They tell Nature magazine that its skeleton helps explain the branching that occurred at the very base of the primate evolutionary ...