Darwin Across Disciplines - Language Evolution: the hardest problem in science? by Prof April McMahon & Dr Simon Kirby

A public lecture by Aubrey Manning and a distinguished panel which explored the relationship between Darwin and Edinburgh. Audio only version.

Professor Crawford traces our history from hunter gatherer to farmer to city dweller and shows how microbes have co-evolved with us, benefiting from our changing life styles, often to our detriment.

Astrobiology is a new science seeking for life on other planets. Prof Ackland reviews the evidence for existence of planets orbiting other stars and what these planets might be like.

This talk explores how sound design and compositional practice might incorporate Darwin's ideas and asks whether evolution is a helpful musical concept.

Homozygosity means inheriting the same "gene" of a particular trait from both parents. Dr Wilson shows how technological advances have helped us access the patterns of homozygosity across the entire genome.

What reason do we have for calling language evolution "the hardest problem in science", and how do we propose to solve it?

Over the last 20 years, the mystery of the origin of HIV-1 has unravelled and we can now paint a remarkably detailed picture of the prehistory of AIDS.

Synthetic biology is an emerging field which aims to construct novel biological parts and systems. It could have interesting implications for evolution.