Welcome to my perspective on science stories in the headlines and behind them
11:08 UK time, Monday, 10 December 2012
David added analysis to:
Sir Patrick Moore was the voice of the space age.
I recall as a child not following every detail of that famously rapid patter but I never minded - because like everyone who watched his broadcasts I was swept along by his extraordinary energy and excitement.
07:45 UK time, Monday, 10 December 2012
Final checks are under way in Antarctica before the launch of a daring attempt to investigate an ancient lake beneath the ice-sheet.
Lake Ellsworth lies below ice that is at least two miles (3.2km) thick.
21:33 UK time, Sunday, 9 December 2012
David added analysis to:
Sir Patrick Moore was the voice of the space age.
I recall as a child not following every detail of that famously rapid patter but I never minded - because like everyone who watched his broadcasts I was swept along by his extraordinary energy and excitement.
15:44 UK time, Wednesday, 5 December 2012
David added analysis to:
You can almost hear the sigh of relief from the world of British science this evening. The surprisingly large boost of £600m mostly makes up for cuts in capital spending confirmed two years ago so plans for new instruments and laboratories can now go ahead. Expect new investments in many areas notably e-infrastructure - the supercomputers that major research relies on.
Science minister David Willetts argued that science is an engine of growth and the Treasury listened. George Osborne told the Royal Society last month that he was "up for the challenge set by Brian Cox and others of making Britain the best place in the world to do science".
12:32 UK time, Tuesday, 4 December 2012
A two-billion-dollar robot scoops up pale-red samples on the surface of Mars to search for chemical clues in the powdery grains of the alien soil.
At the same time, British scientists brave a notoriously windswept plain in Antarctica to investigate an ancient lake lying hidden beneath the ice-sheet.
10:13 UK time, Thursday, 29 November 2012
News that Middle Eastern adversaries are jointly building an advanced research centre has generated a mix of incredulity and optimism.
My story about the Sesame project appeared on Monday.
00:45 UK time, Monday, 26 November 2012
Reporting assignments in the Middle East often involve great danger - think of Syria and Gaza. Others run into bureaucratic obstruction. But the Sesame science project in Jordan is so bizarre it presented challenges of a wholly unexpected kind.
The first was the sheer difficulty of grasping that the story was not the figment of someone's imagination but was actually happening.
16:01 UK time, Friday, 2 November 2012
The floodwaters whipped up by Hurricane Sandy have not yet receded but the temperature is rising on one of the toughest questions in modern science: whether we're getting more extreme weather because of global warming.
Radical film-maker Michael Moore put it with characteristic bluntness. In a Tweet, he wrote: "Stop w/ the disaster porn and tell the America people the bitter truth: We have f***** up the environment & we are now paying the price."
11:28 UK time, Friday, 2 November 2012
David added analysis to:
From the mechanics running the snow ploughs to the cooks producing four much-needed meals a day to the scientists researching what makes Antarctica tick, a visit to the British Antarctic Survey's main base at Rothera reveals an unmistakable pride.
Working in Antarctica is so challenging, and Britain's polar heritage is so laden with triumph and tragedy, that BAS inspires fierce loyalty among insiders and supporters.
14:48 UK time, Wednesday, 10 October 2012
The mystery of how our cells respond to everything from taste to light to hormones like adrenalin is the subject of this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Two US scientists - Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka - have been given the award for their research into what are known as 'receptors' - parts of the cell that are responsible for communication with the outside world. It's with the help of receptors that medications are able to have an effect.
17:16 UK time, Tuesday, 9 October 2012
This year's Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded for research that could lead to a new generation of extremely fast computers and highly accurate clocks.
Serge Haroche, of France, and David Wineland, of the US, share the prize for their work on quantum physics - in which particles of light and matter behave in unusual ways.
14:58 UK time, Monday, 8 October 2012
David added analysis to:
Sir John Gurdon is relishing the story about his failings at school and how his teachers ridiculed any notion that he might pursue a career as a scientist. Dressed casually in a sweater, and rushed from his labs in Cambridge to face the world's media, a fine sense of humour allowed him to take today's tumult in his stride. When I met him, he admitted to being bemused that a Nobel attracted so much more attention than any other prize. I asked what he thought of the 50-year gap between publishing his ground-breaking paper, in 1962, and winning the award only now. Actually, he said, the experiment on the frog cells was carried out back in 1958 - "rather a long time ago", but he said, with infinite patience, that science works best by making sure one's theories are right.
14:11 UK time, Friday, 5 October 2012
Press reports say the world famous British Antarctic Survey is doomed. A petition to save Britain's polar heritage does the rounds. Captain Scott must be turning in his icy grave.
If any of this is right? Beneath the smoke, how much fire can be found?
09:01 UK time, Tuesday, 2 October 2012
David added analysis to:
Silencing the gene responsible for the allergenic protein Betalactoglobulin (BLG) is a clever approach to making cow's milk more palatable. But several difficult challenges stand between this achievement and a product that parents might feed to their infants.
The mystery of Daisy's missing tail is just one of those. It won't affect the milk obviously but it's the kind of flaw that may leave many people feeling uneasy - and anti-GM campaigners will highlight it.
13:19 UK time, Friday, 21 September 2012
Dig into the history of polar exploration and you might wonder what all the fuss is about with this month's news of a record sea-ice melt in the Arctic.
In 1893, the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen ventured through the "titanic forces" of the ice, amid the "howlings and thunderings" of the floes splitting around his ship, the Fram, but then found himself in a stretch of open water.
18:36 UK time, Wednesday, 19 September 2012
David added analysis to:
It's difficult to grasp the scale of this but picture about a dozen United Kingdoms lined up side by side: that's how much more sea ice has vanished beyond the average amount left at the end the summer over the past 30 years.
This is a bigger, faster, more dramatic melt than anyone would have imagined possible even a few years ago. The most striking impression during a visit to Svalbard earlier this month was the look of shock on the faces of the scientists.
09:22 UK time, Thursday, 6 September 2012
At 79 degrees North, deep inside the Arctic Circle, a research base offers a fascinating glimpse of what life may be like in some future human outpost on a distant planet.
As the world's most northerly permanent polar settlement, the huddle of buildings at Ny Alesund in Svalbard has the feel of a cross between a department of the United Nations and a miniature university campus.
10:10 UK time, Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Here's my report about the US space agency which has landed a huge new robot rover on Mars.
The one-tonne vehicle, known as Curiosity, was reported to have landed in a deep crater near the planet's equator at 06:32 BST (05:32 GMT).
06:33 UK time, Monday, 6 August 2012
David added analysis to:
The day I watched Curiosity being built in a clean room at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena last year, the rover's six wheels were lying on one work bench while the chassis stood on another and it was hard to believe the white-suited engineers could make sense of the maze of tubes and cabling.
But what they've created now stands on the red soil of Mars - and it's in one piece. In the hallway of a JPL building we were shown a full-size replica. Walking around it made me realise something difficult to grasp from the pictures and video: this is a beast of a machine, a kind of cosmic Humvee with instruments instead of weapons.
13:56 UK time, Tuesday, 10 July 2012
If you want something to blame for the appalling weather, look up as you raise your umbrella and imagine that high above the rain clouds a great river of wind is flowing through the upper atmosphere.
This is the jet stream and its path is the cause of the repeated flooding being suffered during a British summer that has so far been one of the most miserable on record.
Twenty years ago David visited the secret lab at Los Alamos that created the nuclear bomb and he's been fascinated by science and scientists ever since. His reports on research have taken him as far afield as the Antarctic ice-sheet, the Amazon rainforest and the depths of the Gulf of Mexico.
Since joining the BBC back in 1983, David has covered Northern Ireland, defence, Europe and world affairs. He is the author of three books.
His favourite memories include reporting from East Berlin during the fall of the Wall and exploring the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider on a bike.
Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent
UK and European space and the latest major science stories
Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
Updates on emerging environmental news
Fergus Walsh
Medical correspondent
A focus on the medical and health issues of the day
Tom Feilden
Science correspondent, Today
Analysis of the scientific issues making headlines
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