Life on Mars - Sports Drug Testing Science

Available for over a year

Life on Mars For as long as humans have dreamed of visiting Mars, we have imagined a mysterious, alien place. Yet the more we learn about the planet, with the help of a series of successful unmanned missions, the more similar it seems to our own planet. The current NASA lander, Phoenix, is finding more and more evidence that Mars may not be such a hostile environment. Quentin Cooper is joined by Dr. David Catling, an astrobiologist working on the Phoenix project, and Dr. Matt Balme from the Open University’s Planetary Science Institute, to find out whether life on Mars is such a remote possibility after all. Sports Drug Testing Science This year around 1,500 drug tests will be conducted on British athletes heading to Beijing for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But how are the scientists coping with the ever more sophisticated use of performance enhancing drugs? Quentin Cooper is joined by Professor David Cowan, Director of The Drug Control Centre, University of London. He will be travelling to Beijing Olympics to help the drug monitoring team, and will be responsible for drug testing at the London Olympics in 2012. Quentin and Professor Cowan are joined by Professor Chris Cooper, Biological Sciences, University of Essex.