Cloning the First Human

Doctors Panayiotis Zavos and Severino Antinori claim they are ready to embark on the greatest human experiment of our age. They say they will attempt to clone a human being. Most people think the objections to this are ethical – human cloning would create many moral dilemmas.

There is another question that few ever ask: is the science actually ready yet for cloning healthy humans? Horizon follows the latest research, which has led many scientists to believe that Zavos and Antinori’s plans to clone the first human could end in tragedy. The program also meets couples who think cloning offers them the only way to raise a child who is truly their own.

For decades, cloning remained within the realms of science fiction. The idea that instead of combining a sperm and an egg, a new human could be made from a single cell taken from an adult, seemed completely absurd. But that all changed in February 1997 when Dolly the sheep became the first animal cloned from an adult.

Ever since Dolly, scientists have been continuing to experiment with cloning animals. So far, they have succeeded with a lot of side effects in cloning sheep, cattle, pigs, goats and mice, fueling the belief that humans could be next. 

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 48 minutes)

Is Seeing Believing?

Horizon explores the strange and wonderful world of illusions – and reveals the tricks they play on our senses and why they fool us.

We show how easy it is to trick your sense of taste by changing the colors of food and drink, explain how what you see can change what you hear, and see just how unreliable our sense of color can be.

But all this trickery has a serious purpose. It’s helping scientists to create a new understanding of how our senses work – not as individual senses, but connected together.

It holds the intriguing possibility that one sense could be mapped into another. This is what happened to Daniel Kish, who lost his sight as a child.

He is now able to create a vision of the world by clicking his tongue which allows him toecholocate like a bat.

And in a series of MRI scans, scientists are now looking to find out if Daniel’s brain may have actually rewired itself enabling him to use sound to create a visual image of the world.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 58 minutes)

The Secret You

With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Jennifer Aniston and a general anaesthetic, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are?

While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.

He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait. Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anesthesia.

Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self. And in Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain.

Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.

Feynman: Take the world from another point of view

Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of thesuperfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received theNobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Fix Me

Horizon follows the emotional journey of three young people with currently untreatable conditions to see if within their lifetime, they can be cured.

Sophie is desperate to discover if there’s a medical breakthrough which will get her walking again – a car crash after celebrating her A level results left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Anthony’s leg was amputated after a rugby accident on the eve of his eighteenth birthday. Will he ever be able to regrow his leg? Father of four Dean is desperate for a cure for his damaged heart to avoid an early death.

They’ve all read the headlines about the astonishing potential of stem cells to heal the body. Now they’ve been given access to the pioneering scientists who could transform their lives.

With so much at stake, each meeting is highly emotional as our three young people find out if science can fix them.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 58 minutes)

Richard Dawkins Answers Reddit Questions

Watch out this very interesting interview, specially the hate mails in the end! Really funny... :D

Feynman 'Fun to Imagine'

Physicist Richard Feynman thinks aloud about atoms and how they jiggle, and how we perceive that jiggling as 'hot' and 'cold'. From the BBC TV series 'Fun to Imagine'(1983).  Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received theNobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Peter Pynta & Richard Silberstein - Neuro Insights

Peter Pynta & Richard Silberstein - Neuro Insights talk about neuro-marketing @ The Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement conference. Watch:

Richard Dawkins Speaking at Duke University, Oct 3, 2010

BrainSex – Why We Fall in Love?

BrainSex – Why We Fall In Love, is an interesting documentary about the science and natural findings as to why humans fall in love.

For centuries, love has been celebrated – and probed – mostly by poets, artists, and balladeers. But now, its mysteries are also yielding to the tools of science, including modern brain scanning machines.

A handful of young people who had just fallen madly in love volunteered to have their brains scanned to see what areas were active when they looked at a picture of their sweetheart. The brain areas that lit up were precisely those known to be rich in a powerful feel good chemical, dopamine – the substance that brain cells release in response to cocaine and nicotine.

Dopamine is the key chemical in the brain’s reward system, a network of cells associated with pleasure – and addiction.

In the same lab, older volunteers who claimed to still be intensely in love after two decades of marriage participated in the same experiment. The same brain areas lit up, showing that, at least in some lucky couples, that honeymoon feeling can last.

But in these folks, other areas lit up, too – those rich in oxytocin, the cuddling chemical that helps new mothers make milk and bond with their babies, is secreted by both sexes during orgasm, and that, in animals, has been linked to monogamy and long-term attachment.

It’s way too soon – and hopefully, always will be – to say that brain scientists have translated all those warm and fuzzy feelings we call romantic love into a bunch of chemicals and electrical signals in the brain.

But they do have a plausible hypothesis: that dopamine plays a big role in the excitement of love, and oxytocin is key for the calmer experience of attachment. Granted, the data are preliminary. But the findings so far are provocative.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 58 minutes)

The Wonder and Beauty of Teaching Physics

Walter Lewin, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sheds light on everyday phenomena such as rainbows and what makes the sky blue. Watch Lewin create a rainbow right in the lecture hall and other exciting demonstrations in this engaging and creative discussion of physics that sheds what lies beneath the everyday wonders of our world.

Physics is not longer boring! Watch:

Galapagos: Beyond Darwin

Galapagos: Beyond Darwin takes a scientific and photographic look at marine and terrestrial life of the Galapagos Islands.

The inspiration behind Charles Darwin’s boldest theories of evolution, the Galapagos Islands may be more provocative than Darwin originally expected. Explore the fascinating world of the Galapagos archipelago that Charles Darwin couldn’t explore in his 1835 visit.

Using underwater footage and state-of-the-art scientific equipment, marvel as new discoveries are made about marine and terrestrial life.

Climb into a state-of-the-art submersible and plunge 3,000 feet beneath the surface as history’s first deep-diving expedition to the Galapagos probes the depths where no camera has gone before.

Charles Darwin’s historic voyage to these islands forever changed our view of the world, yet he only scratched the surface.

Beneath the waves, an extraordinary variety of creatures continue to evolve, undisturbed by human settlement.

Share the discovery of over two dozen new species and capture creatures never before seen or even named! Be part of the expedition scientists will be writing about — and you’ll be reading about — for years.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 1 hour, 40 minutes)

The Nature of Sex

All nature’s creatures, the British novelist Graham Swift once wrote,join to express nature’s purpose. And that purpose is illustrated in delightful and sometimes dizzying detail in The Nature of Sex.

Birds, bees, and even barnacles and naked mole rats are driven to join forces to reproduce and pass along their genes to the next generation.

From the sea horse that mates in an hypnotic underwater ballet to the rodent who copulates until he literally drops dead, The Nature of Sexspans the globe to illustrate how an astonishing diversity of life forms find their mates and conceive, raise, and protect their offspring.

This Web companion to the four-part series takes a close look at the primal instinct that causes animals to come together in order to pass along their genes to the next generation.

We also examine how timing can be key in the mating process, and how varied sex contracts create not only new life, but diversity, in both animals and humans.

PART- "The Primal Instinct"

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PART-Time And A Place 

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PART-The Sex Contract
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