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Science, Maths & Technology
Darwin in context
Just how controversial was Charles Darwin? Was he a reluctant revolutionary? And how did he reconcile his religious convictions with his scientific values? When Darwin's theories were first published in the nineteenth century, he initially felt that the whole scientific establishment was against him. It took many years for Darwin to finally ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Darwin's world-wide web
How did Darwin gather data for his work? What do his surviving letters reveal about him, both as a man and as a scientist? He often seems like a solitary figure, but was this really the case? This album looks at the Darwin Correspondence project, an enormous endeavour that has been running for over thirty years. Today the project web site ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Global responses to Darwin's ideas
How was Darwin initially received in Europe, and beyond? Why was he eagerly accepted in some countries and bitterly rejected in others? And how can modern media make him accessible to a much greater audience? History professors Thomas Glick and Peter Kjaergaard reveal the controversies, which occurred when Darwin's ideas were first published ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Search Engines of the Future: The Pharos project
The volume of stored information is growing exponentially and an increasing share is audio-visual content. This content drives the demand for new services, making audio-visual search one of the major challenges for organisations and businesses today. The Open University is one of fifteen European partners in The Pharos project which aims to ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Future Technologies: Designing with vision
Everything we wear, every product we use, every building we see is a design defined by a certain shape. The Design with Vision project illustrates how eye tracking technology can be combined with shape generation software to create a radically new type of computer aided design. As you sketch ideas for product shape the system detects what you ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Interacting with ambient displays
Will an 'ambient information display' change peoples behaviour within a building? The 'Clouds' research investigation project in The Open University's Jennie Lee building strives to answer this question. This video takes a look behind-the-scenes of the project, which involves an artistic installation of grey and orange balloons which have been ...
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History & The Arts
The Final Cut
It is often said that a movie comes to life in the edit suite. Ben Harrex of Final Cut post production studios in London discusses five themes with examples; The Cut, The Dissolve, Cropping and Resizing, Titles and The Sound. Ben explains how the video editor has a huge amount of creative control over how the final product looks. This material ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Tackling noise pollution
Noise is one of the forms of pollution that characterises industrial societies. Many forms of noise in the urban environment, including traffic and aircraft noise, can cause significant harm in varying degrees. So just how much noise are you exposed to? The tracks in this album explain the measurement and control of noise and look at how motor ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Combating air pollution
What’s in the air you breathe and how do you know it’s safe? Pollution control is vital since nobody has a choice when it comes to inhaling the air around them. This album introduces the scientific processes behind air monitoring and air quality management. The five video tracks explore the nature of pollution arising from different forms of ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
The physical world: quantum
This album examines the revolution in scientific thinking that overthrew classical physics in favour of quantum physics. Called the crown of the twentieth century, quantum mechanics is a blueprint for how everything behaves on an atomic level. Seven video tracks presented by Robert Llewellyn offer a beginner's guide to quantum. He revisits the ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
The fascination with crime
Whether it's literature, television or film, crime has always been a popular genre with wide-appeal; but why is this source of fear such a fascinating subject to us? This four track audio album strives to answer this question through interviews with key figures such as criminologists and crime authors, with members of the general public also ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Searching for Syphilis
At the end of the 15th century a terrifying new epidemic spread across Europe, but was this disease, known as the Great Pox, really Syphilis? Did Christopher Columbus actually bring the disease back from the New World? Join us as we look at whether the discovery of a 600 year old skeleton can shed new light on the origins of one of mankind's ...