Repairing potholes, Ozone hole, Internet of hives, Drugs from fingerprints

Published: Nov. 1, 2018, 5 p.m.

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Potholes are one of the biggest frustrations to any road-user, but why do they keep occurring? Following Philip Hammond\\u2019s announcement of \\xa3420 million for councils to tackle potholes, Malcolm Simms, Director of the Mineral Products Association\\u2019s Asphalt & Pavement group, explains how potholes form and why they continue to occur. Alvaro Hernandez of Nottingham University chats to Marnie about new solutions he is investigating to improve our roads and reduce the number of potholes.

Roland Pease meets John Able and Professor Simon Potts, to discuss the value of \\u2018big data\\u2019 \\u2013 in this case, for honeybees. Using a \\u2018buzz box\\u2019 to detect conditions inside and out of the beehive, this data can be transmitted to the cloud and used to keep track of beehive health. This is termed the \\u2018internet of hives\\u2019 and provides a huge amount of high quality data to discover the key indicators of beehive health.

Back in the 1980s, the world discovered that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer, which protects the earth, and us, from being fried by the sun\\u2019s rays. The 1987 Montreal Protocol banned the use of CFCs, and as we stopped emitting them, the ozone layer started to recover. But there are other gases like carbon tetrachloride that destroy the ozone layer and are also restricted. But Dr Matt Rigby, an atmospheric chemist from Bristol University, has been discovering that there are still sources of carbon tetrachloride.

Testing for illicit drugs usually needs a blood or urine sample, but now it can be done from a sweaty fingerprint. And not only on a living suspect, but on a corpse. Adam Rutherford speaks to the developer of this smart chemistry , University of East Anglia\\u2019s David Russell.

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