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Episode details

Radio 4,08 Aug 2013,30 mins

Lab-grown leather; Goal line technology; Bacteria outrage; Marine buoy

BBC Inside Science

Available for over a year

Cultured meat was on the menu earlier this week, but Mark Post's public tasting of his lab-grown burger marks the culmination of decades of research on producing artificial meat. Adam Rutherford talks to one of the other major players in the world of manmade animal products, Gabor Forgacs. However, his company, Modern Meadow, is concentrating on launching a different product first - cultured leather. The football season is about to start, and for the first time electronic Goal Line Technology will be introduced. This year will see the Hawk-Eye system deployed at all Premier League grounds in an attempt to help referees make more informed decisions. But how will it work, and how accurate can it be? Inside Science speaks with the inventor, Paul Hawkins, and the engineers who are testing it to international standards. A bacteria or a bacterium? We sparked a controversy on last week's programme by using bacteria to describe a singular microbe. Adam talks to evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel about how words evolve and whether scientists can halt their adaptation. This week on 'Show Us Your Instrument', oceanographer Helen Czerski introduces her giant marine buoy. She'll be sailing into the eye of a storm just off the south coast of Greenland later this year, where the buoy will measure bubbles to help refine climate models.

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