Discovery

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a brain surgery technique involving electrodes being inserted to reach targets deep inside the brain. Those targets are then stimulated via the electrodes which are connected to a battery powered pacemaker surgically placed under the person's collar bone. Geoff Watts finds out how the technique has been used successfully for treating the movement disorders of Parkinson's disease, in patients with severe, intractable depression, in chronic pain and how it's also being trialled to see if it can also be successful in treating obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Tourette's syndrome and other disorders. Geoff meets patients who have had their lives changed by having deep brain stimulation. He also meets the surgeons at the operating table to find out how it works. At the moment no one has all the answers but one psychiatrist he meets says the success of deep brain stimulation means we should radically change the way we understand how the brain works: that the brain is governed by electrical circuitry rather than a chemical soup of neurotransmitters.Picture: Functional brain imaging allows scientists to see inside a living, human brain

Lorna Stewart reports on the new and growing phenomenon of electronic cigarettes and asks if they really help smokers to stop smoking and if they are as safe as their manufacturers suggest. One billion people smoke worldwide and tobacco shortens the lives of half of all users. With consumption of tobacco products increasing globally, finding a way to help smokers to quit is vital. Electronic cigarettes, which contain nicotine in water vapour, are one new approach, but there is very little research into whether they have any harmful effects. As legislators worldwide start to rule on how to regulate them, there are concerns over who might use e-cigarettes; in some places they are proving popular with young people. Issues surrounding nicotine use and addiction have led regulatory bodies around the globe to act, and e-cigarettes are now banned in Brazil, Canada, Singapore, Panama and Lebanon.In this episode of Discovery for the BBC we hear from public health experts, psychologists, and e-cigarette enthusiasts about what e-cigarettes offer and what the risks are.Image: Man exhaling fumes. Credit: Atif Tanvir from ukecigstore

In the 20 years since the release of the film Jurassic Park, DNA cloning technologies have advanced dramatically. Professor Adam Hart asks whether we could and should start bringing extinct animals back from the dead. The fossilised remains of dinosaurs are too degraded to hold any viable DNA, so Jurassic Park is unlikely to be a reality. But what about Pleistocene Park? Deep frozen remains of Arctic animals like the woolly mammoth or the Irish elk, have been shown to contain DNA - but is it in a good enough condition to rebuild the genome and attempt cloning these animals which became extinct nearly 4000 years ago? Some people think it could work. But should we even be considering it? With so many plants and animals threatened with extinction now, should we be wasting time and resources on bringing back animals that didn't make the cut? Adam Hart asks experts in ancient DNA whether the code for life could be resurrected in animals such as the mammoth, the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the marsupial tiger, or the thylacine. And he asks conservationists whether we should be doing it.

Earlier this year the BBC organised a ‘science festival’ in Uganda. One of the practical outcomes of this was to put physics teachers in East Africa in touch with physicists involved in the Higgs boson discovery at CERN. As a result, several teachers from the region visited CERN and took part in their international teacher programmes. In Discovery this week we look at the impact of their visit and ask how international ‘big science’ projects such as CERN can offer practical development help – especially in sub Saharan Africa.

Dr Kevin Fong concludes a two-part special looking back at the extraordinary events which unfolded a decade ago when the disease known as SARS first emerged onto an unsuspecting world. In a matter of days SARS had travelled around the globe from a hotel room in Hong Kong, and would go on to infect thousands of people, in dozens of countries. But standing between us and the virus were hundreds of healthcare workers who risked their lives to fight against and contain this unknown deadly disease, some of whom paid the ultimate price. Kevin travels to Hong Kong and Toronto to meet the survivors. With concerns rising over H7N9 and MERS, Kevin asks what lessons have we learned since the first SARS outbreak and would those who stepped up to protect us back then, do so again?

Dr Kevin Fong begins a two-part special looking back at the extraordinary events which unfolded a decade ago when the disease known as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) first emerged onto an unsuspecting world.In a matter of days SARS had travelled around the globe from a hotel room in Hong Kong - and would go on to infect thousands of people, in dozens of countries. But standing between us and the virus were hundreds of healthcare workers who risked their lives to fight against and contain this unknown deadly disease, some of whom paid the ultimate price. With concerns rising over H7N9 and MERS, Kevin asks what lessons have we learned since the first SARS outbreak and would those who stepped up to protect us back then, do so again?(Image: Sign for the accident and emergency unit at the L'Hopital Francais de Hanoi. Credit: BBC copyright)

Tracey Logan goes underground to find out how Crossrail is using the latest engineering techniques to create 26 miles of tunnels below London's tube network, sewers and foundations - and through its erratic, sometimes unpredictable geology. She finds out about the latest science being used in Europe's biggest engineering project. London sits on a varied geology of deposits of fine-grained sand, flint gravel beds, mottled clay, shelly beds which are sometimes mixed with pockets of water. This sheer variety has presented a challenge to London's tunnel engineers since the early 1800s. Tracey goes on board one of the huge, 150 metre long, 1000 tonne tunnel boring machines as it makes its way beneath London's Oxford Street. At depths of up to 40 metres it can negotiate London's complex geology with incredible precision and can instantly adjust the pressure it applies at the cutting head to ensure there is no ground movement above. Its precision engineering means it also follows a route which avoids the many existing foundations, sewers, and the tube network, sometimes travelling just centimetres past the London undergound tunnels. Tracey also finds out how unexploded ordnance from World War II still has to be carefully accounted for while digging beneath the capital. The tunnel boring machines operate nearly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and so even has an onboard kitchen and bathroom facilities for the 20 or so operators who make up its 'tunnel gang'.

Scientists Larry Young and Markus Heinrichs discuss oxytocin's role in bonding and trust in voles and humans. Research explores oxytocin's impact on social skills in autism and its influence on relationships. The podcast explores oxytocin's effects on empathy, human bonding, and potential therapeutic applications, raising ethical concerns and the need for further research.

Earthquakes can't be predicted. But millions of dollars are spent trying to forecast them - warning the public which regions are dangerous, what the chances are of a quake in the next number of years and how strong the shaking might be. But following the failures of the Japanese system to identify the danger on the north-east coast, struck by a giant tsunami in 2011, many experts are saying that the dream of hazard assessment is an illusion. We may never know enough about the mechanisms of the Earth to reliably foresee deadly shaking.Others maintain it's a matter of knowledge - the more geologists can learn about the history of earthquakes, about the mechanics of plate tectonics, the better society can prepare for when the ground begins to shake.Well over half a million have died in earthquakes and their resulting tsunamis in the past decade, so the issue is critical.Roland Pease, who reported from Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, speaks to experts on both sides of the argument to find out how deep the crisis is - and what might be done about it.

Earthquakes are feared for their destructive, deadly force. But they are part of a geological process - plate tectonics - that some scientists say is vital for the existence of life itself. Without the ever-changing land surfaces that plate tectonics produces, or the high continental masses raised above sea level by earthquake activity, planet Earth would atrophy into a lifeless mass, like our neighbour Mars. But why is Earth the only planet with plate tectonics? And, when did they start? The clues are so faint, the traces so ephemeral, that researchers are only now beginning to find tentative answers. Extraordinarily, some say that life itself has changed the forces in plate tectonics, and helped to shape the world.