by BBC Radio 4
<p>Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future</p>
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10/11/2011
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April 15, 2025
<p>How much information can you extract from a burnt fragment of human bone? </p><p>Quite a lot, it turns out - not only about the individual, but also their broader lives and communities; and these are the stories unearthed by Jacqueline McKinley, a Principal Osteoarchaeologist with Wessex Archaeology.</p><p>During her career, Jackie has analysed thousands of ancient burial sites across the British Isles, bringing to life the old traditions around death via often cremated human remains. She's also assisted criminal investigators with forensic analysis, and contributed to some of the UK's best-loved archaeological TV shows. And one thing she’s absolutely clear about: far from being macabre, osteoarchaeology is more about the living, than the dead...</p><p>In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Jackie talks about the stories we can derive from skeletal remains, how western attitudes to death have gone through a major recent shift, and why she's kept some of her late father's bones.</p><p>Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced for BBC Studios by Lucy Taylor</p>
April 8, 2025
<p>Surgeons often have to deal with the consequences of violent attacks - becoming all too familiar with patterns of public violence, and peaks around weekends, alcohol-infused events and occasions that bring together groups with conflicting ideals.</p><p>Professor Jonathan Shepherd not only recognised the link between public violence and emergency hospital admissions, he actually did something about it. </p><p>As a senior lecturer in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in the early 1980s, Jonathan started looking into this trend - and his research revealed that most violent assaults resulting in emergency hospital treatment are not reported to police. </p><p>As a result, he devised the ‘Cardiff Model for Violence Prevention’: a programme where hospitals share data about admissions relating to violent attacks with local authorities. He also went on to study various aspects of violent assault and deliver evidence-based solutions - from alcohol restrictions in hotspots, to less breakable beer glasses in pubs. </p><p>The impacts have been significant, delivering reductions in hospital admissions and in violent attacks recorded by police; not only in Cardiff, but in cities around the world where the model is used. Today, as an Emeritus Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Cardiff University - where he’s also Director of their Crime, Security and Intelligence Innovation Institute - Jonathan continues to bring together the medical sector with local authorities, finding practical ways to make cities and their residents safer. </p><p>But his career, straddling the worlds of practise, science and policy, is an unusual one; here he talks to Professor Jim Al-Khalili about what drove him to make a difference.</p><p>Presentedby Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor</p>
April 1, 2025
<p>Doyne Farmer is something of a rebel. Back in the seventies, when he was a student, he walked into a casino in Las Vegas, sat down at a roulette table and beat the house. To anyone watching the wheel spin and the ball clatter to its final resting place, his choice of number would’ve looked like a lucky guess. But knowing the physics of the game and armed with the world’s first wearable computer, which he’d designed, a seemingly random win was actually somewhat predictable.</p><p>Doyne is an American scientist and entrepreneur who pioneered many of the fields that define the scientific agenda of our time, from chaos theory and complex systems to wearable computing. He uses big data and evermore powerful computers to apply complex systems science to the economy, to better predict our future. Much like roulette, economics can appear random but, with the right tools and understanding, it is anything but.</p><p>Now Director of the Complexity Economics Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford, Doyne says there’s a real need to act, to use these powers of prediction to help resolve one of the most pressing questions of our time - how best to prevent climate change.</p><p>Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Beth Eastwood</p>
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