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This is where we can talk about the scientific issues that are making the headlines
11:54 UK time, Friday, 17 May 2013
A team of scientists based at Cardiff University who found that a handful of genes are implicated in a wide range of debilitating neurological conditions have won £5m for further research.
"So the animal has actually gone to the wrong panel. He's swum to the long black panel first and had to change direction to find the platform."
10:30 UK time, Tuesday, 16 April 2013
The world's leading space agency, Nasa, has an ambitious new Grand Plan: to "identify, capture and relocate" an asteroid.
Outlining the Agency's $17.7 billion budget proposal for 2014, Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said the mission would ensure the United States remained in the forefront of space exploration and scientific discovery for years to come.
11:15 UK time, Thursday, 28 March 2013
It's a sobering thought for all us carriers of the Y chromosome, but prostate cancer kills almost as many men every year as breast cancer does women.
According to Cancer Research UK some 41, 000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year, but 10,700 will die of the disease, making it the fourth most common cause of cancer death - and second only to lung cancer in men.
11:32 UK time, Friday, 15 March 2013
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We've come a long way since 1995 when Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz claimed the first official detection of an exoplanet orbiting a distant star - the somewhat prosaically named 51 Pegasi b, orbiting a sun-like star some 51 light-years from earth in the constellation Pegasus.
11:14 UK time, Friday, 8 February 2013
Where do you go if you want to know everything there is to know about dinosaurs?
Well obviously you could ask any passing nine-year-old boy, but if you can't find one of those you're going to need The Complete Dinosaur, 2nd Edition. Eleven-hundred pages of rigorously researched and engagingly presented dino-facts and figures set out in 45 chapters covering everything from the earliest discoveries to the latest fossil-dating technologies and written by some of the world's leading palaeontologists.
10:59 UK time, Wednesday, 16 January 2013
A new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) provides a remarkable insight into star formation.
It looks like a smear of clumsily spilt black ink, or perhaps (for the more romantically minded), a rip in the star-studded cloak of the cosmos.
14:15 UK time, Wednesday, 9 January 2013
It may sound fanciful, but a growing body of evidence seems to suggest there may be a link between violent crime and - no, not policing strategy, or sentencing reform, or even trends in drug abuse, but - exposure to lead.
Yes that's right, the base metal element lead, Pb, or more exactly the lead-based chemical compound Pb(CH2CH3)4 added to petrol to make car engines run more smoothly.
12:22 UK time, Tuesday, 8 January 2013
We have heard a lot about a new era of personalised medicine - some of it pretty wild speculation about miracle cures - that would follow in the wake of the Human Genome Project.
According to President Bill Clinton it would "revolutionise the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases."
13:04 UK time, Tuesday, 27 November 2012
A new technique known as optogenetics is lighting up the field of neuroscience. The idea involves genetically engineering neurons to respond to light, and then using powerful lasers to stimulate and control their expression.
The technique holds out the promise of new treatments across a range of previously intractable neurological disorders, from Parkinson's disease to epilepsy. And that promise is already being turned into tangible benefits - if only at this early stage in animal models .
10:06 UK time, Wednesday, 14 November 2012
How gene sequencing has helped to map and block an outbreak of MRSA
Scientists and politicians promised much when the human genome was first sequenced back in 2000.
11:46 UK time, Saturday, 10 November 2012
The Milky Way's black hole sizes up its next meal.
Guy Fawkes' night may still be fresh in the memory, but astronomers are already jostling for ringside seats at an even more spectacular fireworks display.
10:37 UK time, Saturday, 10 November 2012
Guy Fawkes' night may still be fresh in the memory, but astronomers are already jostling for ringside seats at an even more spectacular fireworks display.
Over the next few months the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy will set about consuming a vast cloud of interstellar dust and gas - somewhat prosaically known as G2 - that has strayed too close to the singularity's event horizon.
11:15 UK time, Tuesday, 23 October 2012
How understanding epigenetic switching could cast light on subtle differences that may give rise to illness .
"Growing up we were like two peas in a pod." "Even our best friends found it quite hard to tell us apart".
08:55 UK time, Friday, 12 October 2012
A new cull of badgers could start in two pilot areas within days.
"As far as badger culling is concerned it has nothing to offer in terms of controlling TB in cattle, and could indeed make the situation worse".
11:53 UK time, Thursday, 26 July 2012
Crows - as any child familiar with Aesop's Fables can tell you - are very smart birds. But are they smarter than children?
According to Aesop "A crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a pitcher of water..." to cut a long story short, the crow realised that by dropping a succession of stones into the pitcher it could raise the level of the water and "...quench his thirst and save his life".
11:37 UK time, Wednesday, 11 July 2012
How do you see what was happening in the early Universe, before the first stars ignited, lighting up the inky blackness?
It's a question that has posed serious problems for astronomers who, in the absence of observational data, have been left pretty much in the dark about this vital stage in the evolution of the cosmos.
14:20 UK time, Thursday, 28 June 2012
If anyone ever needed a reminder of the awesome destructive potential of space weather, look no further than HD 189733b.
Slightly larger than Jupiter, HD 189733b is a huge gas giant orbiting very close to its parent star (HD 189733A), some 60 light years from Earth.
10:54 UK time, Tuesday, 26 June 2012
What would it take to break the impasse on GM crops?
That's a problem that has been exercising minds at the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, which is urging the government to adopt a strategic plan for agriculture that includes a central role for biotechnology.
09:57 UK time, Friday, 1 June 2012
"This is Philosophical Transactions from 1716, and Halley's paper - which is in Latin - is number five in the volume".
Taking care not to damage the brittle, yellowing pages the Royal Society's chief archivist and librarian Keith Moore turns to one of the seminal scientific papers in both the Society's - and science's - history. Edmund Halley's 1716 essay - A New Method of Determining the Parallax of the Sun.
11:41 UK time, Friday, 25 May 2012
Is the enlightenment over? Earlier this year the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Nina Fedoroff, used the platform of her annual address to the country's leading academy of science to warn that the politicization of science - across a range of issues from genetic modification and immunisation strategies to evolution and climate change - was driving the country into a new dark age.
"Fewer people believe in climate change with each passing year, and the conviction that vaccinations cause autism is alive and well. What a tragedy," she said.
Tom joined the BBC as a general news reporter in 1990, interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev on a train to Cornwall for Radio 1 and covering the conflict in Rwanda before joining the Today programme.
After a brief stint at Newsnight, Tom returned to Today to focus on science and the environment. He covers an eclectic mix of developments in physics and astronomy, medicine, genetics, wildlife and climate change - from super massive black holes to preserving adder habitats.
A former presenter of Radio 4's Costing the Earth, he won a Foreign Press Association award for his series on wildlife in Britain in 2000, and a British Environment and Media Award for his coverage of climate change in 2001.
He should have been part of the Sony award winning team that covered the launch of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2008, but sadly the giant atom smasher broke shortly before the awards ceremony and the judges looked elsewhere.
Born in 1964, Tom graduated from Sussex University in 1986. He lives in north London with his partner and three children.
David Shukman
Science editor
My perspective on the science issues of the day
Matt McGrath
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Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent
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Fergus Walsh
Medical correspondent
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