Ebola can remain dormant for five years

Roald Dahl Day is celebrated each year on 13 September. Dahl gave us much-loved children’s books like Matilda, The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which have captivated kids for generations.Dahl is also a controversial figure, and made anti-semitic remarks that his fam ...  Show more

The 80th birthday celebrations of the late, great Queen frontman Freddie Mercury have us marvelling at mercury at an elemental level: as a killer, a cure and more.First, we hear about how to make a telescope mirror out of a spinning bowl of liquid mercury. Then we hear about kill ...  Show more

When the deadly Ebola virus broke out in West Africa in 2014, scientists in the USA set to work analysing it. What they discovered would eventually lead to a treatment. Pardis Sabeti is a virologist at Harvard University and leads the team who sequenced the Ebola virus genome - s ...  Show more

We talk to volcano scientist Ed Marshall in Iceland about working at the volcano which has burst into life spectacularly again after a year of quiet. Also in the programme, we'll be following migrating moths across Europe in light aircraft to discover the remarkable secrets of th ...  Show more

Officials have confirmed the first measles death in an outbreak in West Texas. A meeting to discuss which strains to focus on for next year’s flu vaccines was canceled by the Food and Drug Administration. Public health officials are investigating two outbreaks of an unknown disea ...  Show more

Ebola is back in West Africa. Five people have died in Guinea - the country’s first deaths since the last epidemic ended in 2016. But it’s not all bad news. Vaccines are being rolled out in hotspot areas, scientists know more about the virus and governments are better equipped to ...  Show more