Contents:
Filling in the blanks help give me an audience and a purpose for my writing, because no matter how you boil it down, writing is about conveying knowledge, fiction and non-fiction.
What sort of person can invent a 3-D microscope , a new way of photographing the moon, publish fifty papers on perception, and spend three weeks hunting for a minute sea creature to see how its eyes work? Newer Post Older Post Home. Horizon takes a group of volunteers and subjects them to a series of psychological and physical tests to challenge attitudes to the naked human form. Armed with the latest scientific evidence, Danny travels the globe to quiz primatologists, philosophers and animal rights lawyers to investigate whether or not chimps should be classed as people. Camping for Large Families as long as your family
It is in our very nature, as human beings, and defiantly as women, to spread knowledge. So let me ask you, what are you sharing? I know this is a personal question and each one of you will answer it differently. Words have the power to tear down and uplift, to challenge and encourage. Take the time to consider your impact, whether small or large.
Being writers is not an easy calling, but the ripples we can make in the world is alarming. We have the power to inspire others, encourage people to think differently, and pull them from the world that surrounds them. Sorry, I watched a lot of movies over the holidays So what will your impact be as a writer? How will your words encourage the people around you in ? Inspiration , Valerie Fentress. Permalink posted by Valerie at 5: Permalink posted by Cher'ley at Recently I started to baby-sit a little 16 month old boy.
Forgetting how energetic they could be. My own children are now teenagers so this experience seems new to me some how. I tried to recall a memory, one from my childhood, how old was I in the memory. What was the memory about? Was it a good memory or a bad memory? Was it a memory involving family?
Well, to answer my own questions, I was 3, I was in the hospital, I had to have my tonsils taken out, and my parents had come to the hospital to visit me. I was given a brown teddy bear, one I still have actually. My father was happy; he got to carry me out of the hospital to go home. Oh, to be young again. The cool thing is, being a writer, we can do that.
We can be any age we want. We have to dig deep inside of ourselves to find that 2 year-old running around cleaning out the pots and pans cabinet, or how about being 5 and learning how to ride a bike, feeling the nervous tummy, the excitement of mommy or daddy letting go of the bike. We as writers have so many advantages, but, there are disadvantages too, to bring this age alive, we also need to bring out the sensory words, tastes, sounds, smells, etc.
We have to bring that alive for our readers, it can be a challenge, but, one that is well worth having. It is so exciting to be able to bring these young people back to life, oh to be young again, to feel the wind in your hair as you are racing down a hill on your bike, winning the touch down in a football game, slipping on some ice as you were throwing a snow ball at your best friend.
The rug burn you received after rough housing on the floor with your dad. The sting that followed after you got the burn. There is so much we can describe for our readers so they can feel young again as well, so if you are writing about a young child, dig deep inside yourself, be young again.
I am sure you too will find what it was like to be 5 on a bike. Permalink posted by Carrie at 7: Permalink posted by Annette at 2: Permalink posted by Angela at 5: We provide you with excellent customer service and out of the box promotions. Your tour would include: Fall Second Place Winner! Finding Inspiration in Familiar Tales. A Great Writing Resource from a King. All Words Are Not Equal. Fall Third Place Winner! The Health and Well-being of a Writer. Not Just For College Anymore. Nancy Wick's Essay Posted on skirt! Fall First Place Winner! I Support the Writers' Strike, But.
Riding the Learning Curve. You never know where you'll find an audience. The beginning of a new chapter - in your writing and in your life - is always within your reach, and within you! All-Day Writing Parties are full-day writing intensives specifically designed to provide a big juicy burst of inspiration to jumpstart your writing practice or take your existing practice to the next level! A convenient Cobble Hill location, close to the F train in Brooklyn. The writing, the laughing, the camaraderie, the closeness, the emails afterwards.
One of my top ten days EVER!! I feel such a shift since "removing obstacles. It was such a wonderful experience for me - so well put together and a truly warm and accepting atmosphere - and such a gorgeous group of women you attracted! You really have a beautiful spirit and energy about you and that really came through during the workshop and made for a really safe and open environment. It really felt great to be writing again and be around such a talented group of women.
I truly appreciate the opportunity for being a part of today's class. She writes the blog "One Writeous Chick" at www. Jennifer has been practicing yoga for 9 years, and infuses her passion for spirituality in all her teachings. Seeking Submissions from U. Please avoid writing about "me" and concentrate on what will most help the reader.
Milestones for American Women: Louis, MO , nonfiction writing faculty; natural science children's books published by Harcourt, Alfred A. Knopf; essayist, poet, photographer, keynote speaker, artist. Please consider sharing the important milestones, life changing events, transitions in your life--material that would broadly fit the "Women's Studies" genre that is highly readable, moving and relatable. There are the passages that occur to us for example, losing a loved one, having to relocate and then the passages we choose such as getting a degree in mid-life, adopting a child.
Please focus on those pivotal moments and why they were milestones for you. This book celebrates our passages as women, from one moment into another, from one door to the next. Often it is after the navigation, that in reflection, we see that some of the most difficult are the ones we have learned the most and have had lasting effects as well on those around us. Word total for articles based on your experience: Two articles minimum preferred.
If you are submitting articles, please break them up fairly evenly in word count to reach the 1,, range. Please submit all contributions at one time. Tonight Horizon presents an Australian film which examines our attempts to understand one of the oldest inhabitants of the sea, and perhaps learn from the shark how we may live in the ocean environment.
Covering the physics behind weather patterns and cloud-doctoring experiments. The family of man began to evolve from the primate order about 15 million years ago but how have we changed since then? Where did we come from; what did our ancestors look like and how did they live? The great detective story has traced our origins back to the extinct ape-man of Africa-probably mankind's earliest pre-human ancestor; from the Transvaal comes the skull of an ape-man child, bearing the marks of a fatal leopard attack made about two million years ago.
In a pre-Neanderthal cave in the centre of modern Nice detailed analysis of the patterns of shells, rocks, and bones found on the floor has revealed an exact picture of how man once built his camp there , years ago. Horizon looks at the work of archaeologists and scientists who are digging for similar evidence of man's earlier.
Until now Americans have chosen to receive, and pay for, their medical treatment privately. But in the face of a national shortage of doctors and rapidly rising prices, the private enterprise system seems to be in danger of breaking down. Horizon examines some of the nightmarish situations that have developed in this system, and shows that more and more Americans, fearing illness more for what it might do to their bank balances than to their bodies, are looking enviously at the free universal treatment - for all its shortcomings - enjoyed under national health services like our own.
The Natural History Museum is a place of enthusiasts: Their job is to look after and do research on one of the largest collections of living organisms in the world. Tonight's programme is a chance to look behind the scenes of a well-known institution. It is also about the public who visit it and the people who work there.
The present measles epidemic highlights many of the problems of viral disease which face us all. Do you risk the possibility of infection with the danger of permanent disability, even death, or do you use vaccines, the only established preventive, but which in the past have themselves been the cause of severe disablement? This programme weighs the risks and asks: What are the prospects for chemical cures for viral diseases?
And above all, what has happened to the most remarkable drug of all: Horizon reports on a remarkable new series of experiments that may be the turning point in this battle against the viruses that afflict man. It's almost inconceivable, with our climate, that we should be in danger of a water shortage. Yet some areas already suffer a semi-drought every summer, industrial development is threatened, and the situation is certainly going to get worse.
There is, of course, no shortage of rain here, but most of it runs to waste down our rivers, and with land at such a premium the construction of new reservoirs can no longer be expected to match the increasing demand. There are alternatives, numbers of them, but each provides the engineers and scientists with a complexity of problems. Controlling the flow of a river may radically change, even destroy, its wildlife.
Placing barrages across our biggest estuaries like the Wash and Morecambe Bay may do the same and more. At Morecambe they are investigating the very real possibility that the ports of Heysham and Barrow-in-Furness may be silted up completely. Horizon looks at the work of our scientists as they try to unravel the problems of providing us with more water. Do we really know what goes on where 'vivisection' is practised and why these experiments are supposed to be necessary?
Do the benefits obtained justify man's using the other animals for his own health and well-being? Horizon shows people on both sides of a very wide gulf - the anti-vivisectionists whose opposition is outspoken, and the scientists who carry out this work but rarely speak out for fear of stirring up even more opposition. Thirty thousand children in this country today are mentally subnormal. They will never grow up. Their intelligence has been permanently and profoundly damaged, often without warning and with no known cause. What sort of future can these children expect?
This programme examines new techniques which enable such children to overcome low intelligence and master ordinary skills of living. It looks at how psychologists try to solve their learning difficulties in the hope of breaking down the barriers of incomprehension. Horizon reports on the changing outlook for children who are, as one doctor calls them, strangers in their own country. Insecticides are fast becoming redundant, not just because of their severe side effects, but simply because they are fast losing their effectiveness.
More and more pests are becoming resistant. So alternatives must be found, and Horizon looks at the efforts both here and abroad to discover and apply them. It's work in which the scientists themselves may seem to display a fiendish cunning as they experiment with techniques that range from subtly interfering with the pest's sex life to a bizarre use of tin foil to fool the ubiquitous aphid. But one fact stands out. The pest problem is nowhere more complicated than in an ordinary British field. Among the Yakut Indians the woodpecker is a prized animal.
Its blood is used against scrofula; a powder prepared from a mummified woodpecker is used against high fever; contact with the beak is used as a toothache cure. These practices may seem typical of bizarre primitive superstition, but to Professor Claude Levi -Strauss, the French anthropologist, they suggest a process of thinking just as valid as any in civilised medicine.
For more than 30 years now, Professor Levi-Strauss has been studying and analysing the mind and behaviour of so-called primitive man. What he has found has turned out to be so subtle and complex that his theories should revolutionise the way that civilised man thinks of himself. Ever since the first landships arrived at the front line in , disguised as water cisterns or 'tanks' they have played a dominant part in land warfare.
In their year history from tin-pot adolescence to computerised old age, tanks have demonstrated how military thinking often lags a whole generation behind technology. It took 20 years for the Army to become convinced that tanks had outmoded the cavalry and another 20 to get its design priorities straight.
With film never before seen on television, Horizon follows this year history up to the present-a present in which the British Army may have an obsolete weapon on its hands without realising it. Once, machines copied only man's physical activities - now they can mimic many of his mental processes. How long before they can design their own ' intelligent' programmes, how long before they become man's intellectual superior? What chance do you have of getting a better job? Today, applying for one often means submitting to innumerable tests not only of ability and intelligence but also of personality.
But just how valid are these tests? Horizon examines some of the techniques used by the boom industry of Management Selection and follows two candidates through their ordeal. San Francisco is, literally, a city that waits to die. It faces destruction from an earthquake which, scientists warn, could kill , people. The earthquake is inevitable and imminent, and yet it's claimed that there has been a scandalous neglect in applying already existing knowledge to reduce hazards.
Five thousand children, for example, go to schools sited directly on the actual earthquake faults and in the earthquake predicted those children will be killed. Horizon tells the story of the small group of scientists who, in a struggle against apathy, are trying to save their city. They are also involved in crucial experiments which are already enabling them to predict some earthquakes and which in the near future will enable them to realise the hitherto science-fiction dream of preventing earthquakes. This week's programme in the series on Man and Science today examines whether our Civil Defence plans - many of them secret - are adequate if Britain ever has to fight a nuclear war.
The film contains sequences of secret government and military establishments never before seen on television. Restricted Home Office films to advise the public in the event of war are shown for the first time. According to present plans, you may be able to cross to France by Channel Tunnel in - official. But after years of hopes and fears in which all plans have been killed by a mixture of claustrophobia and xenophobia, the last major obstacle is a credibility gap.
Is it now at last possible that a tunnel will be built? A look at how British Railways has dealt with accidents, accident investigation and safety measures.
For every crash, a newer and safer system is put into place to prevent it from happening again. The earliest known fossil remains of a polar bear come from Kew. So, when polar bears swam in the Thames, did Britain really look like present-day Greenland? What was the Ice Age? Was it so long ago? Will it happen again? Horizon reports on deafness in Britain today, including the provision of aids for the deaf and the dangers of noise induced deafness. Despite the sophistication of aviation technology, airport safety still depends on a surprisingly small group of people.
For this action film Horizon spent a month at London Heathrow - the world's largest, and probably safest, international airport - recording that side of airport activity the passengers never seethe work of those who guard the critical margin between safety and what could prove a national disaster. Should we concrete them over, and use them as reserved tracks for high speed buses? Or replace them with mph vehicles, guided, driven and supported by electro-magnets? Britain's railways were the engineering triumph of the industrial revolution but, say some economists, they are outmoded in the 20th century.
Other kinds of public transport could be much better value. Horizon takes a realistic look at the new ideas and technologies that threaten our existing railway system - and at the research British Rail is doing to meet the challenge. Controlled nuclear fusion means taming the hydrogen bomb. It could solve the world's energy shortage but it's an enormous engineering challenge. Documentary examining the role manual skills play in modern industry.
Industries featured are Nuclear engineering, Shipbuilding, Steel production. Skilled machinists and welders talk frankly about how they feel their skills are valued. Horizon investigates the growing tendency in hospitals to induce childbirth by injecting hormones into mothers. Documentary on the likely effects of the drought in Britain. How are animal experiments carried out in Britain and what would be at risk if they were controlled more strictly? Horizon investigates whether first contact with aliens has already occurred.
The publication of ' Chariots of the Gods? It concludes that von Daniken's thesis relies on unrelated facts, false similarities and phoney evidence. Documentary about the physiological and psychological effects of living in a zero-g space station, built around NASA library film from Project Skylab. Skylab astronauts and other experts discuss the ultimate limitation on spaceflight duration, as well as the exhilaration of being free of gravity. Horizon examines the rise of the microprocessor and asks if automation presents a problem for the future of British industry.
Manganese nodules carpet parts of the deep ocean floor. They're potentially a highly valuable source of minerals. Horizon looks at the engineering challenge of harvesting them, and the knotty problems such a venture would pose for international law. A look at the world's leading hibernation research projects shows that the apparently simple business of dozing off for the winter is, in fact, an extremely difficult trick to learn. The only hope is that the whole process is triggered by a special 'hibernation hormone'.
It hasn't been found yet, but more than one laboratory is hot on the trail. Imagine yourself shrunk to less than a millimetre, travelling down a blood vessel. It's a popular science-fiction idea but. We travel inside the main arteries of the body and past the narrow capillaries of the skin where red blood cells must flow in single file. We go along the carotid artery into the delicate tracery of the brain and down into the massive cavity of the heart itself.
We see the biological processes at work within the body and explore the changes within the arteries that can lead to the heart failures and strokes which take the lives of , Britons every year. The voyage is made possible by the unique camera techniques developed by Swedish photographer Dr Lennart Nilsson. Ten years ago his images of the developing foetus in the womb brought him international recognition. In this film he documents another hidden world - the surprisingly beautiful one within our body's arterial system.
Mexico, the lazy land of the sombrero and siesta, is fast becoming a country of hard-hats and hard work. The recent discovery of huge oil fields in the southern states of Mexico has stirred the government and people to unprecedented efforts. Could Mexico turn out to be another Kuwait? As exploration for new oil expands, could the country eventually match the giant reserves of the world's top producer, Saudi Arabia? Horizon investigates what effect Mexico might have on an oil hungry world-and the effect of oil on Mexico and the Mexicans themselves.
Mexico is already exporting oil - some of it by accident. The world's worst-ever oil spill, from a rig in the Gulf of Campeche. As we move into the 80s, Horizon takes a final look over its shoulder at the last ten years. It's been a decade of contrasts; Concorde and man-powered flight, test-tube babies and abortion, nuclear reactors and solar roofs, micro-processors and meditation.
The 70s opened with men walking on the moon. It ends with an energy crisis, inflation and unemployment. Roundup of efforts to recycle more of our waste, narrated by Tony Britton. In Japan the development of a voice-controlled word processor will revolutionise their offices. In Sweden 'text inspectors' have to check on any illegal entries on computer files.
In Britain Prestel can supply all kinds of information into homes and offices. Horizon examines some of the more far-reaching and subtle effects of the new information age. Can we foresee any of the cultural changes that lie ahead? Helens erupted last May, it did much more damage than geologists had expected.
Horizon looks at the aftermath of the devastating explosion, and at the beginnings of environmental recovery. Horizon presents a portrait of renowned economist John Maynard Keynes. It follows his life story, his ideas on economics and his contributions to the arts. A hang-glider pilot, a miner and a lorry driver-they all happily accept risks every day, but now they are threatened with a nuclear power station on their doorsteps.
Yet according to the experts, they have no need to worry, as the risk is minute compared with the hazards in their normal lives. How accurate are the experts' figures, and why is it that people nevertheless do not believe that a nuclear power station, or a petrochemical complex like Canvey Island is safe? No major technological undertaking is completely without risk. But how are governments to decide what is an 'acceptable' risk, one that is seen to be fair and justifiable by the majority of the population?
Richard Feynman talks about his life. Horizon investigates the current state of computer and analogue graphics by interviewing assists and scientists involved with scientific and technical modelling, 3D movie animation, and computer gaming. Astronauts saw them on the way to the moon. Television screens across the world carried dramatic pictures of them on New Year's Eve Unidentified flying objects - UFOs - undoubtedly exist. In most cases those who see UFOs are not mad or drunk, but responsible adults who are sincerely convinced that they have witnessed something very strange.
And the sightings are not just visual - UFOs have been photographed, filmed and tracked on radar. So are these sightings evidence of spacecraft from other worlds-or of something more down to earth? Tonight's programme examines some of the more classic UFO cases and comes up with at least one rather startling possibility. A history of space exploration starting from the dawn of the space age in with the launch of Sputnik to the Space Shuttle Columbia. Is it possible to read someone's mind or foretell the future? Do some people have psychic powers or a sixth sense? Most scientists would emphatically say no, and that the many people who believe in such things are credulous, irrational and unscientific.
We talk to the leading critics of the new research, who reflect the views of the scientific establishment that ESP really stands for Error Some Place - and we show some scientists' recent attempts to answer their critics by taking ESP out of the laboratory and putting it to the test in the world of commerce, crime, archaeology and warfare. Barney Clark died in March, having survived days with the world's first permanent pneumatic total artificial heart.
Horizon follows the case with the surgeon, William DeVries, and looks at the prospects for this technology to save lives. On 1 August Dr Joseph Priestley discovered an unknown gas-oxygen: Professor Ian Fells shows how we are still trying to understand the links between oxygen and living things. The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, he made his name by discovering that black holes are not necessarily black - some of them shine.
Afflicted by a terrible illness, Professor Hawking relies on his young students to help him In his work - an ambitious programme to unify all the disparate theories of physics into one ultimate theory of everything. If he succeeds, then his discipline, theoretical physics, may have only 20 years or so to go before it comes to an end. Each year in Britain four million animals, including rats, mice, rabbits, dogs and monkeys are used for animal experiments; their bodies are the testing ground for new products as well as for the advance of scientific knowledge.
Scientists maintain that without these animal experiments our future health and safety would be dangerously at risk. Yet to many of us the very idea of animals being used in this way is repugnant. Are all these animal experiments essential or useful? Could they be replaced by cell cultures, computer models and other sophisticated laboratory techniques which would relieve or remove that suffering and death? Does it have to be either our well-being or animal welfare? An investigation into the alternatives to that cruel choice. In Dr Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advances in agricultural technology which had produced new 'miracle' rice and wheat.
The Green Revolution had arrived; it was hoped that world hunger would disappear. But in the years which followed the new technology only seemed to make the rich farmers richer and the poor farmers poorer. How have agricultural scientists responded to this? Through the eyes of an economist, Keith Griffin President of Magdalen College, Oxford Horizon looks critically at the new 'Green Revolution' as scientists work in Mexico, Bangladesh and the Philippines to help the poor grow more food.
Their new approach may offer some hope - but unless there are equal changes in economic and political structures are other kinds of revolution inevitable? The Case of the Hillside Strangler". Report, using material of the time, of the moon landing , and discussion on the USA's space programme. Investigates the history of germ warfare and the threat of a new biological arms race.
Chickens packed in battery cages, pigs in metal crates so small they can't turn round - that's what modern farming means to many people, and they're against it. But what do the animals feel about it all? Scientists are now studying farm animals to find out more about their natural behaviour and about how farmers can change the way they treat them, in the hope of improving farm productivity and making life better for them.
And they've come up with some surprising evidence from experiments that include lambs in balaclava helmets, hens laying multicoloured eggs, pigs building nests - and a group of chickens that roundly rejected an influential government report on welfare. Report on the passage of the European Giotto spacecraft as it passes through the tail of Halley's Comet. The virus that causes AIDS has become one of the most intensively studied disease-causing organisms in the history of science.
Its anatomy has been dissected, and the way it penetrates the body's defences understood. This year a vaccine has reached the crucial stage of testing in monkeys. And a powerful new drug may offer some hope to sufferers. But the more AIDS researchers learn, the more worried they become. The virus has now infected 20 million people across the globe; it is spreading sexually between males and females; and attacking not only the immune system, but also the brain.
Eventually, hundreds of thousands of young people with AIDS may require specialised mental health care. There are clocks in your body which, left to themselves, would have you live a hour day. Tampering with them, just by working the wrong shift pattern, may lead to illness, or may affect your ability to have a child. Understanding body-clocks helps to cure winter depression, warns of death rhythms in unborn babies, leads to pills for reducing jet-lag, gives longer lives to some cancer patients - and may even provide cheaper meat.
How can science help in the investigation of political kidnappings and mass murder? Argentina's military juntas were responsible for torturing and killing over 10, people. Today their bones are their only witnesses. By exhuming unmarked graves, forensic scientists are identifying individual victims and finding important evidence to bring those responsible to justice.
Many of the 'Children of the Disappeared' have survived because they were illegally taken by military families who may have been involved in their parents' murder. When grandparents eventually trace their grandchildren, the only way they can get them back is to prove their real identity by genetic testing.
In Wells Cathedral there is a clue to the origin of rheumatoid arthritis. It is one tiny piece in the puzzle that has vexed doctors for years: Is it an infection by bacteria or viruses? Is it stress or diet? Intense research this century has answered some of these questions, only to reveal more Will it suddenly disappear as rapidly as it appeared? The ultimate cause, and a cure, remain to be found, but recent discoveries offer some hope for the million Britons who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. The information-hungry world of the 21st century will be fed not by electrical signals, but by pulses of invisible laser light flying along fibres of glass.
What is the revolution in communications that has ousted electricity in favour of light? With crashing motorbikes, stretching trains and a semiconductor laser the size of a department store, Horizon investigates the mysterious world of light technology and, at the frontiers, finds plans for computers that will process information with light. Janice Blenkharn faces the hardest choice of her life.
Whether or not she wants to be told if she will develop an incurable genetic disease called Huntington's disease. Every child of an affected parent has a chance of inheriting it. Janice's mother died of Huntington's Chorea, so Janice is at risk. If she develops it, then her children will be at risk.
Until now, there has been no way of knowing who will be affected and who spared. But thanks to painstaking research in a remote South American fishing village, a test now exists. It offers Janice, and others at risk from this fatal disease, the chance to see into the future. For sufferers of Parkinson's Disease , hope lies in a new experimental operation - a brain transplant - and the first on a human being is just about to take place. This remarkable technique may one day also treat patients with Alzheimer's Disease , strokes and paralysing spinal cord injuries, yet promises to be surrounded by controversy because of the source of the transplanted tissue.
Deep in a Japanese cave, a star's last moments are detected by signals from particles which have travelled through , light years of space, and then through the earth itself. It was the most important event in any living astronomer's lifetime, because dying stars are central to the life of our universe. So when the supernova appeared in the southern sky last February, the world's astronomers turned every available instrument on to it.
This unique international collaboration has given fascinating insights into one of the universe's most violent events. The programme follows the supernova's story, from its first sighting in Chile to Australia, America and Japan. Manic depression is a crippling emotional illness. It carries a high risk of suicide. It is now known that it has a strong genetic component.
Those genes affect over one per cent of humanity: Is manic depression simply another genetic cross that mankind has to bear, or do these genes also convey some sort of advantage that helps to explain their survival? Many manic depressives are creative - is it in spite of their illness - or because of it? And what has madness to do with poetry, art, music, literature and leadership? Could it be that mental illness is, in some sense, necessary? The Panama Canal , now a billion-dollar commercial crossroads, was in a snake-infested forest and swamp, harbouring yellow fever and malaria, with sawgrass that shredded skin like a razor.
When the jungle beat Old World canal diggers from France, engineers from the brash young United States took over, fired by the success of their new transcontinental railroad. Of the half million workers, who toiled for decades to create this new wonder of the world, 28, died. Today the canal carries 12, ships a year. But its future is threatened, because of damage to the rain forest on which Panama depends. If you are born into a working class family, from your first breath you are at greater risk of dying than the baby of professional parents.
At all ages, death has a class bias. The NHS has made no difference to the health gap between the social classes. Is the gap because of the way people behave - eating chips, smoking - or is it the result of poverty and deprivation? Does stress matter, and if so, what kind? Horizon investigates the theories behind the shocking statistics and asks if the will is there to do anything about them.
The temperature is going up. Britain may become warmer, but even wetter. The grain belt of America may get too dry to produce grain. In India, the monsoons may fail. Humans around the globe would face greater challenges than ever. By burning coal, oil and gas, carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere.
It keeps more of the sun's heat in, which is making the world warm up. And, in a chain reaction, sea level, crop growth and rainfall will all change. Can the Greenhouse Effect be avoided, caused as it is by one of the most basic human activities - the generation of power? As one scientist says: This summer thousands of holiday-makers are spending their first day in the Costa del Gatwick , as foreign air traffic controllers struggle to find space for them.
Here, a new flight is crammed into the airspace every ten seconds. Horizon gained unprecedented access to investigate how air traffic control really works. One dimly lit operations room handles everything that flies over England and Wales. Yet controllers say equipment is out of date and keeps breaking down. Plans for the new London City Airport went wrong a few weeks after opening day. How much longer can controllers struggle with the tidal wave of aircraft?
Thinking can't be produced just by running a computer programme. So argues John Searle, a philosopher at the University of California. His controversial views annoy those scientists who work to create ' artificial intelligence '. They believe thinking can be done by computer. Using a play in Cantonese, a machine that looks like an old mangle and the ideas and images of recent news, Horizon explores the limitations of digital computers. For the past ten years doctors in America have been experimenting with a new drug to treat incurable cancers.
Interleukin 2 has been both acclaimed as a miracle and criticised as cruel and unethical. Some patients with advanced tumours are completely cured, but most show no improvement and suffer agonising physical and psychological side effects. A few die from the treatment. Horizon follows three patients who have been accepted on to the drug trial. Stakes are high for both sides. The researchers believe that this costly and controversial therapy could revolutionise cancer treatment.
The patients are guinea pigs in a last-ditch experiment to save their lives. Exercise Purple Warrior involves 20, men and 39 ships. Their task is to evacuate UK nationals peacefully from 'Kaig' and, if possible, to avoid war. Meanwhile, in London at the Command Centre used for the Falklands War, staff are still catching up on the overnight signals and getting ready to brief Admiral Dingemans. First Vaux must establish his headquarters ashore, but the weather is beginning to close in, making all amphibious movements unpredictable Winner of the Royal Society Award for best science, medical or technology programme of Their only hope of survival is a heart transplant.
Horizon follows every stage of the fight to save each life: Finally, hours later, will the transplanted heart beat in its new body? Since its discovery on Easter morning in , Easter Island has remained a fascinating puzzle. It is the most isolated inhabited land on earth, and yet it was also home to a glorious stone culture. Can the mystery of its giant statues ever be solved? Who built them, how and why - and what happened to the civilisation that once flourished there?
From all over the world scientists are drawn to this lonely spot, in search of answers. In the first of a two-part investigation, Horizon pieces together the clues that can reveal the secrets of a vanished past. The most isolated inhabited island in the world is haunted by huge brooding statues and a mysterious past. Science has unravelled some of its secrets, but now, in the second of a two-part investigation, Horizon looks for alternative information to solve the remaining pieces of the puzzle. The islanders believe that the statues literally walked, by magic, from their quarry to the ceremonial platforms.
They believe that an old woman's spell on greedy stone-carvers brought the quarrying to a halt, but hazy myth and scraps of legend can be used to re-interpret scientific finds, and finally tell the story of the extraordinary statue-builders. Part of the Doctors to Be series following the careers of medical students.
Part of the Doctors to Be series. The medical students face their first exams. After two years of medical training, the medical students are put into the 'real world' of a surgical ward at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. When Chinese and Japanese people move to California they change their lifestyles. So did the Greeks and Italians who migrated to Australia. The result is a change in the cancers they develop. This programme explores how changes in the way we live can reduce the risk of cancer.
When there is a series of linked murders, particularly of children, the killer is likely to strike again. These are the most serious of crimes. After failures in the case of the Yorkshire Ripper, the Home Secretary promised the harnessing for such investigations of the best detective and forensic skills in the country, and the use of computer technology. New technology is now available on both sides of the Atlantic and may increase the chances of solving these disturbing crimes.
Sir Peter Medawar , who died last November, was a great scientist who, with the help of an exceptional woman, triumphed over adversity and justified his hope of progress. He was shocked by the appalling burns of a Second World War airman who crashed near his home, and he set to work to find a treatment using skin grafts. His fundamental discoveries about the immune system inspired the surgeons who pioneered transplantation. Sir Peter became a Nobel Laureate and figurehead of British science.
After a severe stroke, his own courage and the support of his remarkable wife Jean, enabled him to return to writing, including his autobiography Memoir of a Thinking Radish.
There has been an electronic revolution in television news. It has affected the way news is gathered, presented and edited. Horizon follows BBC TV news teams at home and abroad for just one day, to see how the new technology works: How is the new technology changing the news you see on your screen?
When Tuesday 22 March started, it looked like being an ordinary newsday. It didn't turn out that way. Paul Mercer, a student, wants to be a naval officer. John Josling, a manager, hopes to become a director of his company. Naval psychologists use psychometric tests the modern IQ tests which involve two days of rigorous assessment to help select their potential high-fliers.
But the officer chairing the Admiralty Interview Board believes that it's not until you can look into the man's eyes that you get a feel for his true character. Are the tests valid - and is the result fair to Paul Mercer? John Josling agrees to submit himself to vigorous and potentially embarrassing personality testing. His company believes it will identify his strengths and weaknesses and assist his ambitions for promotion. But can you really change personality with paper tests?
The flow of electricity with absolutely no loss due to resistance could mean far cheaper power, levitated trains and ever-faster computers. But until , the technology was so complicated and expensive that almost its only use was for the powerful magnets of medical scanners. This is the story of a scientific breakthrough and the hectic race that followed - for superconductors that work at higher temperatures, for applications and lucrative manufacturing patents, for an explanation of how the new materials work To be told 'your illness is all in the mind' or 'pull yourself together' is no help to people like Mollie Champion - 14 years seeking a diagnosis and still not cured, or Michael Mayne.
Now, thousands of patients are struggling for recognition of this distressing condition, while fighting the fundamental attitudes of doctors to diagnosis and disease. But as some patients suffer, others try a fresh approach: Shortly before his death in February , the scientist Richard Feynman talked about his ten year fascination with Tannu Tuva , a Shangri-La on the edge of Mongolia , which very few westerners have ever seen.
Horizon follows the preparation of the five astronauts of the space shuttle Discovery , the first shuttle flight since the Challenger disaster of Horizon reports on the abnormally high occurrence of senile dementia and Parkinson's disease on the Pacific island of Guam that scientists believe is linked to a poison in the native cycad fruit. Horizon looks at evidence that seems to show that diving can cause long term damage to the brain and spinal cord, even in shallow waters.
Weapons are being developed that are controlled by computers to destroy specific targets. Horizon investigates the damage that pollution and tourism are inflicting on the Swiss Alps. Where can the elderly live who are unable to live at home, in a care home, or in sheltered accommodation? An interview with Professor Eric Laithwaite who believes that many modern inventions already exist in nature.
Two-and-a-half years ago, broadcaster Glyn Worsnip was told he had an incurable brain disease. Like many thousands with obscure diseases he wanted to know: Who is paying for it? Are patients getting the benefit? To get answers, he questions the Medical Research Council, a Nobel Prize winner, his own GP, a large drug company, small charity support groups and eminent doctors round the country. In Paris, Xavier Rodet has taught a computer to sing Mozart; in Greenwich Village, Wendy Carlos synthesises a classical concerto from electronic tones.
Professor Nagyvary has made a new violin with waterlogged wood and powdered gems. He claims it sounds like a Stradivarius. In Australia, Manfred Clynes reckons he has discovered a universal human language of emotion. To prove it he creates feelings on tape. What's left for human performers to contribute?
British Afro-Caribbeans are ten times more likely to develop schizophrenia than the rest of the population, according to a psychiatric study in Nottingham. Black critics claim that white psychiatrists are misdiagnosing black people and that the report is a classic example of racism in medicine. They also warn that the report may do untold harm to our race relations.
The Nottingham researchers believe that their findings could provide a clue to the causes of this mysterious and terrible form of madness. Are their conclusions valid and should the research have been done? The Tasaday , a remote Philippine tribe living 'in the Stone Age', are now seen as a famous scientific hoax. But when they were first discovered, in , they were hailed as the anthropological find of the century.
How did these people dupe every scientist who went to see them? Horizon has investigated the extraordinary story and arrived at a quite different conclusion. Weigh up the evidence from their stone tools, their language, their knowledge of plants and Millions of visits are made each year to acupuncturists, homeopaths, food allergists, or people who diagnose disease by looking in your eyes or waving a pendulum.
Scientific evidence is still lacking that such therapies cure disease, but they often seem to make people 'better'. It turns out that whether you chose an NHS consultant or a fringe alternative practitioner, it may not make much difference to your chances of 'getting better'. Genius, aeronautical engineer, soldier, schoolmaster, gardener, hospital porter, architect, recluse, and Cambridge Professor of Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most original thinkers of this century. Born years ago into one of the richest families in the Austro-Hungarian empire, he gave away all his money, and lived on the edge of madness and suicide until his death in And yet his last words were: Feeling ill at work?
It could be your building that's to blame. When Sick Building Syndrome strikes, it brings a flurry of mild symptoms such as headache, tiredness, sore eyes and runny nose. Horizon follows the investigation of one sick building where 94 per cent of the occupants report symptoms. Investigators know it's not a serious infection like Legionnaire's disease, but until now have been stumped to find a cause. Could it be dust or moulds in the ventilation ducts, too few negative ions in the air, even a build-up of chemicals?
By piecing together different strands of new research, they can now discover the culprit. An examination of whether Horizon has had an effect on the scientific community. Horizon investigates how many deaths on the road could be prevented with further technical and legislative changes. An investigation into recent biosensor technologies. A profile of the inventor Clive Sinclair.
Horizon examines whether child abuse and depression can be prevented by working with the mothers of young children. An investigation on the effects of volcanic eruptions on the global climate. On the evening of 17 October there was an earthquake 60 miles south of San Francisco. Sixty-seven people died, 2, were injured and 10, left homeless. A massive earthquake, many times as damaging and this time centred directly on San Francisco, is expected within a few years.
A city fire chief predicts they are so unprepared that they could lose 20, buildings and 8, lives. Will the city learn from the lessons of the quake of 89? Nasa is about to launch the Hubble space telescope, which promises the greatest advances in astronomy since Galileo.
It will show ten times more details than is possible from the ground and see objects 30 times fainter or five times farther away than ever before. It will search for planets outside our solar system, and will tell us much more about the Universe. With long delays and huge cost-overruns, it is now approaching its point of greatest risk.
If anything goes wrong on the launch, there is no back-up. Looks at the manufacturing processes involved in the production of a new five pound note due to be launched in June Considers the design and production of currency , and the intricate techniques developed to prevent forgeries. First in a three-part Horizon Special series on the Soviet manned space programme , looking at the story of the projects, cosmonauts and engineers involved. Second in a three-part Horizon Special series on the Soviet manned space programme, looking at the story of the projects, cosmonauts and engineers involved.
Third in a three-part Horizon Special series on the Soviet manned space programme, this one concentrating on the story of the two Soviet cosmonauts who risked their lives earlier this year in a space walk to try and repair their stricken craft, as well as anecdotes from veteran cosmonauts.
Chernobyl Unit Four exploded six years ago this week. The intensely radioactive ruins of the reactor now lie buried in the 'sarcophagus'. Much of it will be radioactive for more than , years. Horizon were the first westerners to film inside the sarcophagus where an elite team of Soviet scientists are working in areas of radiation that would be considered lethal by the west. They are driven by the urgent need to hunt down the tonnes of uranium and plutonium which melted in the explosion, and to discover whether a second accident could happen at Chernobyl.
This film tells the story of the remarkable scientists dedicating their lives to working there. This story by Horizon looks at the expanding and controversial area of "smart drugs". An investigation into the discovery of Boxgrove Man. The second of two programmes about the Red Planet. Traces the course of the planned manned mission to Mars , which could take place within the next twenty years. Focuses on the numerous complications involved in such a mission, from the potential physical damage caused to cosmonauts by their zero-gravity surroundings to the psychological pressures involved in the month-long trip.
The story of how and why Dolly the sheep , the first cloned copy of an adult mammal, came to be created. The first of Kate O'Sullivan's trilogy of films about Antarctica. Antarctica's polar ice sheet is the highest, coldest, windiest, driest and most unforgiving place on Earth. The average temperature near the South Pole is minus 49 degrees C, winds reach over km an hour and water in liquid form is scarce.
Yet this hostile environment has now become the last frontier on Earth and, each year, a population of 3, human colonists tries to settle here. This film focuses on the risks and rigours of living in this inhospitable continent. The second of Kate O'Sullivan's Antarctic trilogy. The mystery of what formed the vast continent of Antarctica has obsessed explorers since Shackleton and Scott. Piecing together evidence from the tiny amount of rock exposed above the ice, geologists have come up with a radical theory that may also predict how Antarctica will change in the future.
Third of Kate O'Sullivan's Antarctica trilogy. This final film is a detective story unravelled by scientists scattered on the ice sheet, trying to understand the mechanisms that control it. First of three documentaries taking a look at the issue of obesity. This programme attempts to establish why some people are destined to be big.
The second in a trilogy of programmes studying obesity. As the search for drugs to reduce appetite by resetting control mechanisms in the brain continues, new research uncovers the powerful food ingredients that could win the slimming war. The programme examines the lengths to which some overweight people are prepared to go in attempting to reduce their size, from stomach stapling to the ingestion of dangerous drugs. Last of a trilogy of programmes studying obesity. Examines some ground-breaking research into eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia , trying to establish if they are inherited.
The discovery of a group of anorexics in a most unlikely place seems to put paid to the theory that the disease is the product of western's society's increased levels of stress. This episode originally aired on 7 April under the title Designer Babies. Horizon investigates an extremely rare and destructive phenomenon that strikes every few thousand years: Separating conjoined twins is one of the most challenging operations a surgeon can face. Horizon examines the dilemmas which confront doctors and parents. Horizon investigates Lake Vostok , a vast and ancient lake deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.
Horizon follows an expedition to the Andes where wreckage from missing passenger plane Star Dust mysteriously reappeared. In the summer of the Roman city of Zeugma all but disappeared under the flood waters of the Birecik Dam. Horizon tells the story of a team of archaeologists' final visit, struggling to save what they could before the dam waters rose. An investigation of why circumcised children from the Lozi and Luvale Tribes of Africa appear to have much reduced HIV infection rates. Huge plant- and meat-eaters have been unearthed in Argentina along with evidence that the mega-carnivores hunted together in packs.
Horizon investigates growing evidence that the ultimate force of cosmological destruction - a supermassive black hole - may in fact breathe life into every galaxy in the Universe. The extraordinary story of Canadian Bruce Reimer who was surgically turned into a girl after birth, offering a fascinating insight into what makes us male and female. This episode is a re-edited version of Atlantis Reborn after Broadcasting Standards Commission ruled that the original special episode broadcast on 4 November was unfair to the author Graham Hancock. After demolishing a building in Miami in , workers discover a perfectly preserved circle of large holes, almost 13 metres across.
Horizon follows the investigations to determine the origin of the mysterious circle, concluding that it is the remains of a forgotten tribe called the Tequesta. Horizon investigates how a small jawbone could explain how, million years ago, a slimy fish-like creature grew legs and walked onto the land to become our ancestor. The story of caulerpa taxifolia , an algae that has caused devastating ecological changes in some marine habitats.
Horizon investigates whether the drug ecstasy could be used to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. Horizon investigates a theory that for millions of years the Earth was entirely smothered in ice, stretching from the poles to the tropics. Two disruptive children are followed through a controversial treatment regime. Coming to a Beach near You". Horizon examines how the mariners' mythical wall of water could indeed be a quantum physics reality. Flint tools found on both sides of the Atlantic ocean suggest a whole new version of North American prehistory. Horizon conducts its own experiment to see if the alternative medicine has any scientific basis.
The Amazon soil offers a prehistoric clue to the truth behind the 'cities of gold' and a possible answer to rainforest destruction. Where did the inhabitants of Easter Island come from and how did they create its celebrated stone statues? People with narcolepsy fall asleep all the time. Could their condition offer us all a route to a future without tiredness? Horizon examines the effects of a major asteroid collision with the earth. An investigation of the effects that a Dirty bomb would have on London if it were exploded in Trafalgar Square.
The search for a female equivalent of the drug Viagra. A 77,year-old fragment of paint in Blombos Cave raises important questions about human evolution. An investigation into gene therapy in which diseases caused by genetic anomalies could be eradicated. Jonathan Miller and the Milgram Experiment ". A new theory could help save thousands of lives by predicting impending earthquakes. Recent discoveries have shown that Mars has all the ingredients for life, including water, so could life be present there?
Horizon investigates the discovery of extreme rock-eating microbes - a testimony from primordial Earth and a glimpse of life elsewhere in the Solar System. Investigations into temporal lobe epilepsy seem to suggest that our brains are naturally programmed to believe in religion. Was the response to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak of appropriate? To mark the hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers inaugural flight, Horizon tells the story of Percy Pilcher , an Englishman who could have been the first person to fly a powered aircraft.
In , four years before the Wright brothers, he had constructed his own aeroplane. But on the day it was due to take off, technical problems led him to fly another aircraft - a decision that ended in a fatal crash. Now, with a team of historians, aviation experts, and its own test pilot, Horizon painstakingly rebuilds Pilcher's flying machine to it to the test.
This is the extraordinary story of how a small metal disc is rewriting the epic saga of how civilisation first came to Europe, years ago. Since Professor Manfred Korfmann has been excavating the site of Troy. He has made various discoveries - how large the city was, how well it was defended and that there was once a great battle there at the time that experts believe the Trojan war occurred. But who had attacked the city and why? Horizon then follows the clues - the ancient tablets written by a lost civilisation, a sunken ship rich in treasure, and the golden masks and bronze swords of a warrior people.
The film reaches its conclusion in a tunnel deep beneath Troy, where Korfmann has made a discovery that may reveal the truth behind the myth. Examining the evidence of what omega 3 can do. The incredible story of Dr Temple Grandin who has a legendary ability to understand animal behaviour in a way that nobody else can. She is convinced she experiences the world much as an animal does and that it's all down to her autistic brain. Though Grandin didn't learn to speak until she was five, at nearly 60 she's an Associate Professor of Animal Science and the most famous autistic woman on the planet.
Horizon follows her remarkable journey to global acclaim. Every day across the world, more than 3 million people catch a plane. Yet despite it being the safest form of travel, many of us are terrified of flying and what we fear most is crashing and dying. Most people believe that if they're in a plane crash their time is up, in fact the truth is surprisingly different. We have spoken to aviation safety experts, crash investigators as well as plane crash survivors - and put together the 'ultimate survivors guide to plane crashes'. Visit the links below to find out more.
Danny Wallace is on a mission to convince the world that chimps are people too. He believes the time has come to make our hairy relatives part of the family.