The Evolution of Echolocation and The Cause of CJD

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The Evolution of Echolocation Did bats learn to fly before they learned to listen for echoes? The discovery of a species over 50 million years old sheds new light on the evolution of echolocation, as Dr Nancy Simmons of the American Museum of Natural History explains. Polar Ponderings Science writer Fred Pearce makes some icy reflections on the warmer, more watery world of the future. Deep Impact Fresh from its first success - investigating the interior make-up of comets – NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft is charged with a new mission. Professor Michael A’Hearn of the University of Maryland tells Geoff about the search for new, extra solar planets. Doubts about cause of CJD The agents responsible for Creutzfeld Jacob disease in humans, and scrapie in sheep - “transmissible spongiform encephalopathies” (TSEs) - were thought to be caused by abnormal proteins.But doubts are growing about the prion theory, as Sue Broom discovered when she went to the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Scotland. AI in Art Could artificial intelligence ever be taken seriously as a creative force in the world of high art? Geoff gets his portrait ‘painted’ by an intelligent machine, the brainchild of software programmers at London’s Imperial College.