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Swiss acoustic artist Robin Meier manipulates the sounds of insects and birds to create ethereal soundscapes. As his mosquito-inspired musical installation Truce is aired in the French city of Nantes, he talks about firefly synchrony and setting up feedback loops in nature.
Chemist and educator Bassam Shakhashiri is known for his dramatic live demonstrations of chemistry in action. As he takes the helm as president of the American Chemical Society (ACS) this week, he talks about the state of science education and how to engage people in chemistry through the wonders of the lab.
For the past decade, physicist Kenneth Libbrecht has been studying how ice crystals form, taking thousands of photographs of their intricate structures. He describes how he grows snowflakes in his lab at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and never tires of tracking the real thing in the far north.
Theoretical chemist, poet and playwright Roald Hoffmann won a Nobel prize in 1981 for his work on how molecules change as they react. As the International Year of Chemistry comes to a close and he releases two books, Hoffmann talks about language, ethics and the sublime.