Has global warming peaked?

The scientific consensus is that the planet is still getting hotter. But the global temperature has not exceeded the 1998 record.

So how do we know whether we are in the middle of a blip or if the warming trend has stopped?
And how do scientists measure the global temperature anyway?

Tim Harford speaks to: Peter Cockroft, BBC weather forecaster;Dr Peter Stott of the Met Office;James D. Annan, Frontier Research Centre for Global Change, Japan;David Whitehouse, former BBC science editor and the author of The Sun: A Biography (John Wiley, 2005).



UK's pub capital

Presenter Tim Harford always thought that the UK town with the highest concentration of pubs was St Albans in Hertfordshire. Then someone told him it was Chesterfield in Derbyshire.

Tim wondered how many other towns claim to be our pub capital so asked listeners at the end of last week's programme which towns they believed had the most pubs for their size.
These are just some of the answers we received:

Glasgow, Otley North Yorkshire, Brigg North Yorkshire, Bewdley Worcestershire, Witney Oxfordshire, Chopwell Tyne and Wear, Glastonbury, Lancaster, Abingdon Oxfordshire, Saffron Walden Essex, St Albans, Beeston Nottinghamshire, Bollington Cheshire, Weymouth Dorset, Wareham Dorset, Hazel Grove Cheshire, Tadcaster N.Yorks, Beverley Yorkshire, Newton Stuart Dumfries and Galloway, Southend, Llanwrtyd Wells Wales, St Davids Pembrokeshire, Manningtree Essex, Wantage Oxfordshire



Can Hillary win?

Some of Hillary Clinton's leading backers have said her victory at the recent Pennsylvania primary means she has improved her chances of winning the Democratic nomination for presidency.

But two US number-crunchers say the odds of her beating Barack Obama have just gone from slim to zero.

Chadwick Matlin of Slate magazine tells Tim Harford about his online delegate calculator and how it is predicting that Hillary does not stand a chance.

Visit Slate magazine's Delegate Calculator



Cereal for a boy?

Women who eat breakfast cereal around the time of conception are more likely than others to give birth to a boy, according to a new study.

The researchers analysed the diet of pregnant women to see if there was any link between food choices and the gender of the child.

But the researchers looked at the correlation between gender and over 100 different foods. So was the link between breakfast cereal and giving birth to a male merely the result random variation?

Our reporter Ruth Alexander has been looking at the statistical significance of the study's findings.


Courtesy from: BBC_More_or_Less