Nobel Prizes for Science 2016

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This week the Nobel Prizes were announced. The Chemistry prize was for mini machines, the Medicine award went to a scientist who discovered autophagy, or the process of clearing up cellular rubbish, and researchers who predicted strange materials were the Physics’ recipients. Roland Pease explains the relevance of these to Marnie Chesterton. Humans have the ability to put ourselves in other peoples’ shoes and know what they are thinking. Now experiments done by Dr Christopher Krupenye and Dr Fumihiro Kano, in which they tracked the eye movements of apes as they watched videos, have shown that apes too have this theory of mind. Jonathan Amos and Roland Pease discuss new research into how eels migrate to the Sargasso Sea and why there appears to be a limit to longevity in humans at around 120 years. When a fire starts underground, the consequences can be deadly, particularly as the fire’s behaviour is an unknown quantity. Kieran Brophy reports from the BP Institute at the University of Cambridge in the UK, where Professor Andy Woods is modelling how fire develops in tunnels. Image caption: Innovations have included this nano car, produced by Bernard Feringa's team. Credit: University of Groningen Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Deborah Cohen