The first of two articles for the BBC Focus end of year special – ‘Radical Ideas to Expand Your Mind’ – explored how microorganisms known as ‘ice-nucleation active bacteria’ can affect the weather. Read More »
Category: BBC Focus
What is Cannabis oil and can it be used as medicine? (BBC Focus)
Following a series of high-profile legal cases involving parents using cannabis oil to treat their children’s epilepsy, and with shops like Holland & Barrett now selling ‘cannabis-based’ oil, I did a Q&A for BBC Focus to clarify what this product really is and whether using it as medicine is a good idea.
In cold blood: How therapeutic hypothermia can save lives
History is littered with miraculous tales of people surviving hours without a pulse in extremely cold conditions. My latest article for BBC Focus explores how this has inspired medics to induce hypothermia in patients suffering strokes, heart attacks, and even multiple gunshot wounds in order to help stave off death.
Understand antibiotic resistance (BBC Focus)
As part of the BBC Focus ‘instant expert’ series, I explored how microorganisms develop resistance to antimicrobial drugs, what we can do to stop it – and what the world will be like if we don’t. Read More »
Who wants to live forever? (BBC Focus)
In the small town of Comfort, Texas, an audacious ‘Timeship’ is being built to cryogenically freeze thousands of human bodies, in the hope they will be revived by a future civilisation. Could such an idea ever work?Read More »
The art of saving lives (BBC Focus)
I spoke to photographer Reiner Riedler about his 2015 project The Lifesaving Machines, which involved him documenting the enormous, expensive, and sometimes eerie machines built to help keep us alive. Read More »
Nanomedicine: cancer-killing bots in your bloodstream (BBC Focus)
A large article on tiny devices: my report on the potential medical uses of nanobots and nanoparticles is the cover feature of the latest issue of BBC Focus. Features the word ‘tiny’ a lot.
The Origin of Life in Ten Minutes (BBC Focus)
Another tricky commission from monthly science mag BBC Focus: explain how all life started on Earth. Or, how chemistry somehow turned into biology, around 4bn years ago. Part of their ‘Understand…in ten minutes‘ series.
In the shops from the beginning of December.
How do we know how hormones work? (BBC Focus)
Sept 2015// A history of the discovery of hormones for BBC Focus, featuring lots of people doing weird things with testicles.
DNA in ten minutes (BBC Focus)
August 2015 // I was recently given the challenge of explaining DNA in its entirety “in ten minutes” for BBC Focus magazine. Read More »
