All Episodes 1982 - 1999

How to Pick Up Girls, Win Arguments and Influence People with Arnold has one wish: he wants to be successful.- At everything. In. tonight's film all his wishes are granted. Among those offering to help are Dale Carnegie , Machiavelli, Bob Sharpe and Michael Korda Will Arnold find his dream girl? Will he rule the world? Will true happiness be his?

In the jungles of South-East Asia entire bushes light up like Christmas trees, and in the Caribbean the seas glow with a luminous light. It's called bioluminescence - a term used to describe the many extraordinary creatures that turn themselves on in the dark. Watch fireflies in their hundreds' pulsing messages in the dark scuba dive in search of fish that-blink and flash, and swim among clouds of luminous plankton: And discover why the US Navy so very interested.

Judith Hann cordially invites you to join her at dinner with Professor Nicholas Kuru , the world's premier gastrophysicist, and friends, including Michel Roux , Master Chef. On the menu will be some familiar dishes cooked in a most unfamiliar way; and, never before seen on TV the reverse baked alaska, with the hot bit inside.

Every hour of every day dozens of spy-in-the-sky satellites are peering down at us from space. What are they looking for and what can they see? Apart from the weather satellites, other spacecraft are busy sending back spectacular pictures of the earth's surface, particularly for oil and mining companies. But the real super spies are the military satellites used by Russia and the USA. What they can see of each other from space is top secret, but there's enough evidence to show they can see an awful lot more than you think.

Unique, designer-built, jet-powered car. Code name Project Thrust. All metal wheels, £8,000 each, low mileage, fuel consumption 50 gallons a minute, 0-300 mph in 12 seconds, estimated top speed 650 mph. Brainchild of driver Richard Noble. Highly suitable for attempt to win back for Britain the world land speed record.

'If music be the food of love, play on '. But what kind of music should one play for which girl? And does it change from country to country? In the West there is almost total agreement over what romantic music should sound like. Indeed there is music to go with every kind of mood and occasion, from weddings to cowboy films. we hear it and we simply know its right for a particular emotion. By why should music convey emotions? Are musical notes themselves actually sad or happy? And if so, why then do Indian love songs sound completely different from our own?

Why is a Tornado like a gannet? The first is an RAF combat aircraft, while a gannet is a bird that dives vertically for.fish. The answer? Well, both are designed to kill-and both use variable-geometry wings. Birds and aeroplanes ride the air by the same rules, but how far do the similarities go? Aircraft sometimes stall dangerously - but do birds? Why do some birds fly in ' V' formations? And how have birds' wings made flying safer for everybody?

The first half of the programme looks at the physical effects of a single medium-sized nuclear warhead on a large city. How effectively would various types of shelter protect us from these effects? Two couples experimentally live in fall-out shelters for ten days each. The implications of the film are then discussed by medical, scientific and civil defence specialists. Would cities be likely targets in a real nuclear attack? What kind of resources would be available to deal with the aftermath of such a calamity? And what could we do - practically - to diminish the effect if it ever were to happen?

As part of Wednesday's Q.E.D. documentary, A Guide to Armageddon, two London couples each volunteered to carry out a ten-day 'consumer test' - underground in a nuclear shelter. Joy and Erik sealed themselves in a £10,000 buried steel bunker, six feet underground. Ken and Liz followed Home Office recommendations and dug their own 36-inch-wide emergency trench in the back garden. They, too, stayed down for ten days. This programme is a record of how the two couples coped underground during last winter's severe cold spell with only a fixed camera to observe them, completely out of touch with the outside world.

Farlv September 1982. In the Sabra and Chatila district of West Beirut, the civilian population was settling down to rebuilding lives and homes broken by three months of bombing, shelling and shooting. They were doing what they have been doing for the past eight years - trying to make the best of it. At Gaza Hospital, British doctors and nurses were among the foreign volunteers who were trying to cope with the human debris of modern siege and bombardment.

A bullet slices a playing card in two. An orange takes two weeks to rot. Much of the world around us moves too quickly-or too slowly - for us to see. Tiny mushrooms grow on the roots of our own hair; and heat rises invisibly from our heads; too small or too transparent to see. For The Invisible World an impressive array of equipment was gathered to photograph things our eyes cannot see. The result is a fascinating collection of images, some startling, many very beautiful.

Locked away from sight in Turin Cathedral lies a 14ft long piece of linen. Scorched, patched and yellowed with age, it bears the faint image of a crucified man. Is it the work ot^a 14th-century artist, or is it the miracle of miracles - a true image of Jesus of Nazareth? To help answer that question, the Holy Shroud of Turin has been tested by the most advanced science known to man. Tonight Q.E.D reports on the investigation, and reveals the surprising result of its own unique experiment.

Do you have trouble getting to sleep at night? Spare a thought for Leslie Gamble. He claims he has not slept for 11 years. On the other hand Joyce Hannon always feels incredibly tired. Many times a day she simply falls asleep whatever she happens to be doing. Joyce has narcolepsy -a quarter of a million Americans have it-but the odds are you won't have heard of it, because the world of sleep is shrouded in ignorance. Yet it's a world in which we spend a third of our lives.

There are some days when mechanical things can just drive you crazy - like the car that refuses to start when you're already half-an-hour late or the phone that only gets wrong numbers or the key that sticks in the lock or the tap that won't stop dripping.... What can we do about them? Tim Hunkin , ex-engineer, inventor and Observer cartoonist, has his own ideas. In this programme, with the help of a mechanical barman, a flying sheep, some gunpowder and a DC10, Tim looks at machines and suggests, with his own animated cartoons, ways of making them more reliable.

On 17 October 1981 the New-market Champion Stakes was won by the Aga Khan 's Vayrann. Routine tests showed traces of anabolic steroids and horse and trainer faced disqualification for doping. But eventually the horse was declared by the Jockey Club to have produced his own anabolic steroids. How can this happen? And is dope testing accurate? Reporter KIERAN prendiville talks to Dick Francis , Vayrann's trainer Francois Mathet and others as he pieces together what actually happened behind the scenes in a scientific whodunit where the chemical detectives turn out to provide some false clues.

The continuing saga of Richard Noble 's quest to become the fastest man In the world. The place: rpriarh Nevada, on the edge of the mack Rock Desert. The date: 4 November, just four weeks ago From the desert comes the crackling roar of a jet engine. A plume of dust streaks across the flat desert floor. Thrust II is challenging for the land speed record of 622 mph. It's the final day of an eight year-long dream. Last year floods stopped him This year he had floods again and then the local environmentalists got the attempt temporarily banned. But at last all seems well and he's ready to go ...

Does thunder make the milk go sour? Do frogs and cows really know when it's going to rain? Are bee stings good for rheumatism? And why should a dog worry about getting too close to a walnut tree? PROFESSOR DILLY enthusiastically travels the Cotswolds on the track of the old wives. He takes a light-hearted look at some of the tales our grandmothers told us. Do these time-tested rules of rural life work? Well. he tries to answer that too.

Whatever happened to Uri Geller ? He's the man who in 1973 first amazed television audiences and hard-nosed scientists with his mysterious spoon-bending. Well, he's still at it, alongside many new metal-benders who have popped up all over the world. This film takes a cool look at the phenomenon and asks whether the scientists, after ten years of research, are any nearer solving the mystery? With the help of conjurors and metallurgists, Q.E.D. puts the benders to the test. Are Un Geller and the others tricksters, or do they possess genuine para-normal powers?

The 100-foot-high wave, the little stream that suddenly becomes a raging torrent, the gale that topples trees, lorries and people. And the deadly power of the thunderbolt. Q.E.D. looks at the violence of freak weather. And, to explore our chances of surviving, John Lees, the 'Q.E.D. Test-Man', takes on the power of nature. To simulate a flash-flood, he stands below a 200-million-gallon reservoir as the sluices are progressively opened. He battles against a man-made hurricane until he blows away. And shows how to be within an inch of a direct lightning-strike - and survive.

There have been many films about lions but never one like this. Previously you have only seen the lion during the day. But lions are nocturnal animals and daytime hunts are the exception rather than the rule. Now, from Savuti in the Chobe National Park in Botswana, comes a remarkable study of the secret life of the lion. For three-and-a-half years a team of researchers has followed lions throughout the night by the light of powerful searchlights. Using low-level film lights and extra-sensitive film and lenses, their researches have been recorded. Almost incredibly, the lions became quite used to the noise of the trucks and the lights. This has made possible a unique new view of the cruel and restless life of the lion at night.

Chris Serle sets out to investigate the bugging game. In a top-floor office of a skyscraper two men are having a secret conversation. From the skyscraper across the street a snooper directs a special laser on to the office window, picking up the tiny movements in the glass every time one of them speaks. Futuristic equipment turns these movements into minute electric signals. Eventually it is decoded back into sound. Fact or fantasy? Don't ask the people in the bugging business. They've become so confused between real life and Hollywood they no longer know which is which.

Documentary which follows the life of Simon Weston, a former soldier in the Welsh Guards who sustained 46% burns when the RFA Sir Galahad was bombed by the Argentines during the Falklands War, showing how he had to learn to cope with disfiguring facial injuries and psychological scars.

The ' polygraph' lie-detector has arrived in Britain. It measures tiny changes in your breathing, perspiration, and heartbeat, as they ask you questions. Someone's hurt - did you do it? Did you steal money from the till? Did you lie when applying for your job? Q.E.D. observes the polygraph in action in America, sees a British ex-policeman in training in Atlanta, and meets a man found guilty of murder after a polygraph test. In Britain, we may soon rely on it for our national security. But is that wise? How does the polygraph work? How effective is it? Can you beat it? And who's next for the little test - could it be you?

Both Tim and Jean Richardson - from East Grinstead - are ' professional parents', formally approved by the Better Baby Institute in Pennsylvania, USA. They have three children: Rufus, 5, has ' a rage to learn Beth, 3, ' would rather learn than eat'; and Harry, at 18 months, ' would much rather learn than play'and yet they are all perfectly ordinary, happy children. What's the trick? Well, Q.E.D. followed a group of learner parents through their one-week course in Pennsylvania. After all, says Glen Doman , the founder and force behind the institute, ' a child's brain is the only container that the more you put into it, the more it will hold '.

In this programme, HEINZ WOLFF steps aboard a London bus and finds himself immediately transported to a bizarre and unfamiliar world. The past. The year 1948. As he wanders round that strange era of de-mob suits, Clement Attlee , Victor Silvester and Snoek, he asks: ' What has technology actually done for our lives? How different are our homes, our clothes, our food?' What has really changed since 1948, the year when George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four? His journey takes him past East End hop-pickers and to the waiting BEA Dakota sitting on the tarmac at Northolt, its engines revving for the flight to Paris - a weekend treat for the well-to-do!

The Bat, the Blossom and the Biologist with Donna Howell There is in Arizona a bat that flies thousands of miles each spring to feed on the flowers of a plant that blooms only once in 25 years-and then dies. Last summer Q.E.D. went to the Sonoran Desert in pursuit of this curious but intimate relationship-for it is a trading of food for sex: the bat gets the food and the flower gets pollinated in exchange. How did such a partnership ever come about? For more than a decade biologist DONNA HOWELL has been unravelling just why two such unlikely partners got together and how they make the most of each other.

Would you make a good eye-witness? Here's your chance to find out with some experiments that could change your mind. The evidence shows we can recall events that never happened. And recognise people that we have never seen. So Q.E.D. asks how far can we trust the evidence of eyewitnesses in the practical business of crime?

Q.E.D. looks at how ordinary things are put through extraordinary tests. It's a world of crashes, bangs-and worse. Tests like 'dropping the lift', 'blowing up the pop bottle', 'turning over the petrol tanker' and 'exploding the custard powder'. Virtually everything made by man is tested. To check that it does what it's supposed to do. To see what happens if it breaks and above all to make sure that it doesn't kill you.

Making the blind see for 14 has to be a bargain. And an artificial leg for a one-legged cyclist costing not much more must be good value too. It happened in Rajasthan in northern India when Q.E.D. went to film a mobile hospital. Five operating tables in a schoolroom. Boy scouts leading in the patients. Sparrows flying in and out through the 'theatre' windows. An Indian version of M.A.S.H. But Jumna walks once more - and Fatima can see again.

Can divers work longer, harder and deeper by breathing hydrogen, a gas that has never yet been used for that purpose? What are the risks they will face? Explosion? Narcosis? Anaesthesia? Convulsions? To find out for himself, diving doctor Maurice Cross joins an Anglo-French team in their compression chamber - where, if anything went wrong at maximum pressure it would take nine days to get them out.

Magnus Magnusson stumps International Mastermind Chris Hughes by asking him what his brain looks like, split down the middle. Not one to take 'Pass' for an answer, Mastermind sets off on a quest that takes him from computerised brain-waves to the discovery of Pluto and a spell inside the most extraordinary brain-camera in the world.

The War of Words Down Under with Anthony Clare BUGA UP is the provocative name of an organisation in Australia that is devoted to defacing adverts, organising street happenings and infuriating the tobacco companies. They're not anti-smoker, just anti-cigarette sponsorship and ads. If we oppose drug pushing, they argue, then we should oppose cigarette promotion too. Australia is producing a movement of angry men and women - led by doctors who are prepared to break the law.

'It's a PanGalactic Federation Star-ship, Captain!!' 'Activate force wall. Fire Z-Ray 3!!' The laser's popular image has always been as a death ray. But so far, in the real world, it has never achieved that fictional promise. Since it was invented 25 years ago, it has been just almost everything else - a bloodless scalpel, a precision welder, a source for ultra-fast light communication. But now, at last, fiction may become reality as the superpowers square up to set the laser on the warpath....

Alley cats. Footloose and fancy-free. Streetwise moggies playing to the rules of evolution. Competing in the game of the survival of the fittest. Enter the Council Cat Catcher - playing to different rules. London's wild cats face new control measures: life doing porridge; a neutralising snip of the castrator's scissors; death in the gas chamber. Fair do's? Well take a walk on the wild side with Q.E.D. before making your mind up.

Question: who would ever live in a place where there are 25 earthquakes a day? Answer: 30,000 Italians in the city of Pozzuoli on the coast near Naples. For the last 15 years their city has been rising over three inches a month. Go away for a week's holiday and your house could be an inch higher when you come back. Now the pattern is changing; the earthquakes are becoming larger ... and the people are starting to leave. After all, Pompeii and Herculaneum are just down the road.

Poets have written about it, songwriters sung about it, but what do scientists say about the intimate process of boy meets girl? Q.E.D. looks at the ways they have been investigating the first magic moments of attraction between the sexes. What's the primary thing we look for in the opposite sex? Are men and women attracted differently? How far do personality differences affect our choices? Why are men and women's bodies so unalike? What's the best opening gambit? And might we be turned on by people's smell? All this and more in a dispassionate appraisal of our more passionate feelings.

How do you like your Kenny Everett ? Stirred or shaken? Spun or mangled? Or powdered and squirted clean off the screen? Kenny explores the electronic Aladdin's cave of computerised video wizardry where TV pictures already spin, flip and perform gymnastic exercises. Where will it end? A peep behind the scenes of TV production reveals many secrets, including the video game that could plug the experiences of a lifetime straight into your eyeballs!

Minefields, poison gas, hired mercenaries, early-warning systems - it's no holds barred in the never-ending battle between two of nature's superpowers: the insects and the plants. Q.E.D. uncovers a microscopic world of conflict where thousands of insects lay siege to a single tree. Unable to move, plants retaliate with their arsenal of chemical weapons. There are few clear victories, but one thing is certain - plants are not pacifists.

It all began 50 years ago in a muddy field in Northamptonshire with three scientists, an RAF bomber and a borrowed BBC short-wave transmitter. The experiment was to lead to the radar which won the Battle of Britain and defeated the U-boats in the Atlantic. Today civil airlines could not operate without it, neither could the space programme. Radar also forms NATO's first line of defence in the cold war; it has come a long way from that muddy field.

By risking life and limb, Austrian downhiller Franz Klammer has had one of the most successful careers of any ski-racer. But now that daredevil Franz is over 30 and has injured his knees and back, it is harder than ever to win. Last autumn, in the build-up to this year's World Cup, he revealed to Q.E.D. how he depends on new technology to get him up to speeds of over 80 mph. At the first treacherous and icy race in Italy, Q.E.D. was there to see if science could help him pull off another victory against the odds.

How would you feel if you found a foot in your machinery at work? For peat-cutter Eddie Slack , 'it was terrible'. But for Britain's archaeologists it was tremendously exciting. It turned out to be the preserved foot of a 2,500-year-old Iron Age man. With Q.E.D.'s cameramen looking over their shoulders, a team led by Dr Ian Stead uncovered elbows, arm, fingernails, a ginger moustache and beard, neatly clipped. Then they found a garrotte around his neck. Was it a mugging or ritual sacrifice? What was his last meal? What could modern technology reveal about the prehistoric murder victim?

All the things you never realised you wanted to know about snooker - such as why a straight shot can be rolling in both directions, and why playing from one end of the table is different from playing from the other. Steve Davis , the World Champion, takes on Peter Lawrenson , a scientist. With the help of slow-motion cameras, specially marked balls, an executive toy, some coins, a computer and even an electric drill, their unusual contest offers some unexpected revelations.

There's a battle going on in the English countryside, a fight to save one of the most beautiful and intelligent wild animals -the otter. Operation Otter meant releasing otters born and bred in captivity into the wild, struggling to make the wild safe for them and hoping against hope they would breed. The four strategists in this modem Noah's Ark operation soon found that monitoring the success of their campaign was fraught with problems ...

Would you be concerned if someone you loved was drinking an average of two pints of bitter a day? Or do you believe the old saying that 'another little drink won't do us any harm ? You might be more uneasy it the someone in your life was your 15-year-old daughter. Through the revealing attitudes of teenagers and their parents, Q.E.D. discovers how little all of us understand about alcohol -the third-biggest health hazard in Britain-and how widespread is the problem of under-age drinking.

Half-a-million people in this country stammer. All they want is to be able to say what they want, when they want. But when they have tried everything which the National Health Service can offer-and still fail to speak fluently-some of them still hope for a miracle. With Q.E.D. watching, eight people went looking for it in the most unlikely place-Kirkcaldy, Fife, linoleum capital of the British Isles, and home of the man whose advertising holds out a promise of that miracle-' Stammering Cured-Andrew R. Bell '.

With Malcolm Campbell as grandfather and Donald Campbell as a father, Gina had to be someone special; obsessed like them with speed, records - and courting tragedy. Donald died attempting the world record in Bluebird. Last summer, with Q.E.D. watching, Gina attempted a record of her own. Her boat was also called Bluebird. And it reared out of control like her father's. But Gina survived to tell her story.

The day is dawning, so they say, when your personal domestic robot will trundle to fulfil your merest whim. It is already possible to program one to make you a cup of coffee. But what if you then decided you'd like a biscuit too - chocolate of course? Jane Lapotaire wanted a biscuit; but the robot didn't want to know. Q.E.D. explores what would be involved in designing a robot that could see, recognise, aim at reach for, hold and hand her this biscuit - and also discovers on the way quite a lot about what people can do.

Three years ago this week, the Sir Galahad was anchored in Bluff Cove. When the Argentine bombers came screaming in, 50 men died. One of the survivors was Simon Weston but he was terribly injured, with severe burns over 46 per cent of his body. This is a reshowing of the highly-acclaimed film which traces his progress from the day he arrived back in Britain, his struggle with surgery and his battle to come to terms with his scars. While for many of us the Falklands War is already history, Simon's war still rages on. Next week Q.E.D. brings his story up to date.

Three years ago this week, the Falklands War ended. But Simon Weston 's fight had only just begun. Terribly burnt on the Sir Galahad, Simon was lucky to be alive. From the moment he got home, Q.E.D. followed the struggle to rescue Simon's hands and face. After a total of 26 operations, Simon now has to rebuild his life and live with his scars. As he faces civvy street, it's still perhaps too soon to know if 'Simon's War' will end as 'Simon's Peace'.

Jump in an RAF Hawk and see the entire coast of England, Scotland and Wales in half an hour flat. An apparent flying speed five times that of Concorde! David Bellamy in the Wash solves the mystery of King John's baggage. Clay Jones in Cardigan Bay delves into an ancient kingdom engulfed by the sea. And Patrick Moore reveals what's buried beneath Beachy Head. While we whizz around our extraordinary coastline, 21 regional accents explain every twist and turn, in a first non-stop view of our proud and ever-changing shores.

It seemed like a perfectly normal birth: Mary and Gordon [text removed] never suspected anything was wrong with their first baby, Sara. The frequent rolling of her eyes was put down to wind; so it was three and a half months before they learned that Sara was blind, with cataracts in both eyes. Q.E.D.'s cameras followed the Bryces for four tense months as doctors and family struggled to rescue Sara from her world of darkness.

Rape is one of the world's most serious and fast-growing crimes. A recent London survey found that one in six women had been raped at least once. In America it's one in four: that's one rape every 17 minutes. Tonight's Q.E.D. presents film of an experiment carried out at an American psychiatric hospital near Seattle. Four women victims were brought face to face with four convicted rapists. Psychiatrists at the Western State Hospital believe that rape is learned behaviour, which can be changed. They saw this face-to-face confrontation as one possible way of doing this. Q.E.D. took the film to Grendon Psychiatric Prison in Buckinghamshire to find out whether such an experiment could be of any value here ...

Q.E.D. looks at the science behind the thrill machines. Discover the best seat on a roller-coaster, the fun of becoming five times heavier in as many seconds, the speed of a fall that's so fast there's no time to scream. Hold tight and prepare yourself: you'll be spinning upside-down, looping the loop while standing up and dropping so fast that you've no idea where your stomach is.

Swimming, motorcycling, basketball, tennis, sex; it's all available in Sun City, Arizona: as long as you're old enough! A chorus line of show-girls from 60-81 dances for retired judges and ex-industrial tycoons. Hell's Angels on a pension thunder past silverhaired policemen. Join in the laughter, the banter and the sheer zest for living as people deemed too old to work enthuse about running their very own city. Then wonder at the profligacy of a society that too often throws such a national resource on the scrap-heap.

One Saturday night last summer in London, scores of men and women paid M each to walk on fire. It was 15 feet long and an incredible 400 degrees centigrade. Hugh Bromiley , a master firewalker and British martial artist, claims anyone can learn to walk on fire. Q.E.D, accompanied by a team of prominent scientists, observed the mass firewalk. Could the whole dramatic event simply be a dangerous delusion? Or does everybody possess untapped powers of mind over matter?

Some doctors thought he might never even walk. Now he runs a mile every day and over the past year, 7-year-old Doran Scotson has been aiming for a time of 11 minutes. Not beyond many boys of his age: but Doran is different. Severe jaundice at birth damaged his brain leaving him horribly handicapped. Doran and his mother Linda have one singular ambition; by extraordinary effort to achieve ordinary progress. But there is nothing ordinary about one of the year's most moving stories of love, determination and courage.

By the age of 75, each one us will have spent ten years in another world - seeing bizarre images, experiencing strange sensations and strong emotions. For everyone, whether they remember them or not, will have spent at least two hours a night dreaming. But do these dreams have any meaning? Bill Oddie agreed to submit himself to the scrutiny of psychoanalysts and the experiments of sleep researchers to find out just how much light science can shed on some of the commonest dream images.

About once a month in America, pet dogs will kill - usually either a child or an old person. What makes man's best friend unleash the behaviour of his pack-hunting ancestors? Animal psychologists are trying to pin down what releases canine aggression. And now they even offer psychotherapy to cure the bad dog's hang-ups.

Mark is anchored to a wheelchair by a crippling inherited disease, Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. His sister, Tracey, is not affected, but she could be a carrier - in danger of passing the disease on to any male babies she may have. The scientists, led by Kay Davies , are struggling to develop a test that will tell Tracey whether she is a carrier or whether she is lucky and can forget her fears.

The murder victim's distorted remains reveal that he was first banged on the head, then garrotted, and finally his throat was cut. Lindow Man, alias Pete Marsh, created a national sensation when his body was dug out of a Cheshire peat bog. In this second report, Q.E.D.'s cameras continue eavesdropping on the detective team led by Dr Ian Stead as it pursues its enquiries into the death. Why was Lindow Man killed? Has the team got the date of his murder totally wrong? And can it reconstruct from his wizened corpse what he looked like when he lived and breathed?

A farming community in a remote part of the UK has been hit by a series of deaths and horrifying deformities among their cattle in the last few years. In Ireland, another farmer faces financial ruin after similar deaths and abnormalities at his farm. In both cases the farmers believe they have found the cause of their troubles. But are they right? Q.E.D. investigates, and uncovers a problem which could be affecting the health of us all.

Q: What's the link between a Plumber and a dinosaur? A: Baryonyx, a giant feat-eating dinosaur, was discovered near Dorking one Weekend in 1983 by a plumber called BILL WALKER , when he dug up its massive fossilised claw. Q : What's the dinosaur's side f the story? A : Watch Q.E.D. tonight.

Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901. Do you know what day of the week that was? David Kidd does - in fact he'll tell you (as fast as a mini-computer) that it was Tuesday - like 12 March 1996 and even 1 March 2044. But ask him to add eight and seven, and the chances are he'll get it wrong. How come? Because he has an astonishingly low IQ of 65. Like David, Noel Patterson and Stephen Wiltshire are also classified as severely mentally impaired. Yet their musical talent and artistic ability respectively, impressed Antony Hopkins and Sir Hugh Casson. Q.E.D. explores a bizarre psychological phenomenon - Idiots Savants to the 19th-century Frenchman who first identified it - in English 'the foolish wise ones'.

A light-hearted look at the origins of Kenny Everett from 'Big Bang' to birth. Cosmic space-time controller John Westbrook gets a red alert when Kenny tries to grow a human being in his garden tub. John finds our experimenter is no threat to creation, so he transports him around the galaxy through various dimensions, accuses him of being Brigitte Bardot 's husband, throws him out of a balloon and whisks him back to the beginning of time - all to show how a human being really is made.

Everyone makes mistakes. It wouldn't be human not to. Forgetting keys, burning the toast, missing an appointment ... every day, a succession of tiny disruptions to the usual smooth surface of everyday lives; infuriating, yes, but hardly disastrous. But what would happen if the same kind of lapses were made on the flight deck of a jumbo, or at the controls of a nuclear power station?

Gillian Rice, Graeme Garden and Alan Maryon Davis reveal how much the experts know about AIDS, and what challenges they face in finding a vaccine and a cure. With the help of specially-designed models - of the AIDS virus and of the human skin - the Bodymatters team of qualified doctors guides you through the biological facts clearly and simply so that you can decide for yourselves how likely it is that you personally will be affected by AIDS : the disease that's now killing two Britons every day.

We've all made paper aeroplanes; but this one was different. It kept on flying for nine days - right round the world. Q.E.D. was in at the beginning, long before Dick Rutan , Jeana Yeager and their Voyager aircraft flew slowly and bumpily into the record books. It was essentially a grass roots project - a home-built plane paid for by selling t-shirts. And yet their astounding success proved that ordinary people still push the frontiers of technology - when they've a mind to.

On 18 September 1986, two young stockbrokers leapt from a hot-air balloon 35,000 feet above Norfolk to break the civilian World Freefall Record. They fell over six miles and reached a speed of 350 mph before opening their parachutes: their bodies had to withstand incredible extremes of pressure and temperature. So what made Rory McCarthy and Mark Child risk their lives in The World's Longest Drop?

Take the sheer power and versatility of a top athlete. add the strength and endurance of a heavyweight boxer and somehow pack it all into the poised and graceful frame of a prima ballerina. Then you might just have someone who could rehearse and dance Swan Lake without injury. Q.E.D. spent six weeks with the Northern Ballet Theatre to see just how far dancers have to punish their bodies before we can admire their seemingly effortless elegance on stage. With five of the company injured and dancing in considerable pain from the outset, it was going to be a real struggle to open at Glyndebourne on schedule....

The evidence: a shattered skull, a broken jaw, faded honeymoon photos and incriminating letters. The motive: revenge, ambition or glory. The suspects: the Pompous solicitor, the French Priest and the man in black. Holmes and Watson stake the reputation of their creator on a journey to a tiny Sussex village, to unearth the truth behind the discovery that astonished Edwardian society and shook British pride to the core. It may have been the greatest April Fool in scientific history, but the death of an early Englishman at Piltdown is a true tale, in which any similarity to events or people long since dead is entirely deliberate.

You would hardly expect a hospital to encourage its patients to suffer enormous pain but one in Japan does. It is their way of getting the crippled back on to their feet. Mrs Shinsho and Mrs Ise are confined to wheelchairs with rheumatoid arthritis. Q.E.D. watches their gritty determination over four months as they struggle to walk - even run. With only blasts of deep-frozen air as a temporary anaesthetic, they are made to force their stiffened joints back into action, 12 hours a day, at this remarkable Japanese treatment centre.

Alaisdair Macbeth likes to go out with girls, but he's frightened to ask. John Gibbons is frustrated when his young son beats him at rifle shooting. Broadcaster Toni Arthur can't stop her hands shaking when she's under pressure. The Alpha Plan, claims psychologist Dr David Lewis , teaches you how to solve your own problems - by relaxing. Can Toni, John and Alaisdair change their own lives in only 12 weeks, using Alpha?

Have you ever eaten earth or clay and enjoyed it? If so you are not alone. Q.E.D. talks to Joyce from Liverpool who daily licks the soil from potatoes, Joanna from Mississippi who sprinkles dirt from beside the road over ice-cream and Sherry from Ghana who sells a selection of edible clays in the market. Q.E.D. asks the experts about this puzzling habit, why is it that millions of people like eating earth?

Why not colour sheep a luminous orange so that they can't be lost in snowdrifts? Or improve bus services by giving every passenger a steering wheel? Ideas tested past destruction by DREADCO, the private research corporation imagined by Dr David Jones , writing under the name of DAEDALUS, and converted to reality by Q.E.D. in this all-expense-spared bio-pic. Yet nearly one in five of Daedalus' mind-fusing inventions comes true, one way or another. See David Jones 's amazing perpetual motion machines. Wonder why the boat floats in an empty tank. Discover how Napoleon was poisoned by his own wallpaper. Just what is David Jones up to?

You too could walk on the moon, eat astronaut food and fly a space shuttle mission; it's all part of the weekly routine in the Huntsville, Alabama, Space Camp. A fantasy comes true for four British youngsters when Marie, Richard, Sally and Matthew, spend a week training to be astronauts and learning all aspects of space travel ready for their final mission when they could be anything from a member of Mission Control to the Shuttle Commander. They find that their hand-on feel of the future produces some thoughtful reactions.

Do you think you've got a bad memory? Forget people's names? Would you like to able to remember things better? Tonight master magician Paul Daniels will help you out - not with any magic tricks, but with some fascinating memory-improving techniques. Paul's been using them for years, and recently they have even helped him to learn a foreign language - at the rate of over 700 words a week! Paul says anyone can improve their memory, so join him as he demonstrates (with the help of Dr Mike Gruneberg, Debbie McGee, the Man in the Moon, Father Christmas, and Donald Duck) the magical power of your memory.

Nylon stockings have always had a special appeal: to women for their silky sheerness; to men for their sensuous sheen. Imagine a world without them, where even the loveliest leg got lost among the laddered lisle. That's how life was before a manic-depressive chemist from the American mid-west invented nylon. For ten years Wallace Carothers struggled to crack the chemistry of synthetics, and to get a grip on his hang-ups about women. In the lab, he eventually achieved success; outside it, his life was a failure. Or so he thought; little did he know he was to become the man who touched a million legs.

Are our children adequately fed? Does a modern diet provide them with enough important vitamins and minerals? Two major scientific trials on children's nutrition have recently been completed in Britain and the USA. The studies have asked the surprising question: could a poor diet affect children's behaviour and academic performance? Q.E.D. has been given exclusive access to these trials and their findings are being made public for the first time tonight. It's a programme no parent should miss.

For Shakespeare, death was 'that undiscovered country' from which 'no traveller returns'. But today, as medical science improves, more and more patients can almost literally be brought back from the dead. And occasionally they tell of strange experiences, some of which appear to defy scientific explanation. Dr Peter Fenwick, an expert in brain function, has made a special study of 'near death experiences'. He asks: are they simply hallucinations; true glimpses of an afterlife; or do they hint at a new dimension of human consciousness?

For years, pioneer flyer Gunter Roshelt has striven to crack the secret of a bird's flight. He's tried everything, from solar energy to his own son's muscle power. But it was not until he flew across the Danube using a craft designed 170 years ago, that he got his latest inspiration. If birds fold their wings, then so should he. But would they work?

Jean has been trapped in her room for 13 years. Her life is dominated by bizarre rituals; she washes her hands 50 times a day and is compelled to check constantly the position of every item of her furniture. Jean's husband Ian and her children Tamara and Toby have no choice but also to live by her tyrannical rules. Q.E.D. follows Jean's voluntary entry into hospital and into a dramatic course of treatment. The question for her, her family and her doctors is can she ever be rescued from her obsession?

Death Valley in California is the hottest place in the western hemisphere. Not even mad dogs go out there. Q.E.D. follows Gary Shopland's attempt to run 20 marathons in 20 days in temperatures of up to 1360F. Monitoring his physical and mental reactions to these extreme conditions were a physiologist, a paramedic and a sports psychologist - If mad dogs don't, then what makes Gary run?

One year after British television transmitted a week of programmes on AIDS, Q.E.D. brings you the story of Suzi and Vince Lovegrove who were facing the reality in Australia. The Lovegroves let the cameras into their home in Melbourne to follow the last months of Suzi's struggle with the disease.

The storm that swept the South East last October took everyone by surprise and changed the landscape for ever. Francis Wilson looks at the forces at the heart of the British 'hurricane', and investigates other whirlwinds that are around us. These whirlpools in the. air keep jumbo jets flying, create hailstones and blow people off their feet. A CBC production

At first it seemed just an amusing idea - why not teach a robot to play snooker? A little eccentric perhaps, but good for a laugh. Soon it became a project of startling technical complexity. Koorosh Khodabandehloo tells the story of how, with the help of Professor Richard Gregory , world champion Steve Davis and a team of computer experts, he painstakingly gave a mechanical arm sufficient artificial intelligence to challenge snooker commentator Ted Lowe to a match he will not easily forget.

The cinemas of the 21st century may have arrived already; strange buildings with giant wrap-around screens to fill your whole field of view. No joins, no edges, just a single, crystal-clear image, ten times normal size. And you are right inside it. This is the story of how four Canadians developed the Omnimax system - how they overcame apparently impossible problems using a 'rolling loop' - and how they almost failed altogether.

Traditionally, it's the manager of a football team who's supposed to do all the thinking; the players are expected simply to keep fit and to deliver what he asks of them. But sports psychologist John Syer has other ideas. He believes that, by encouraging players to think for themselves, the performance of both individuals and of the team as a whole can be improved. As an experiment, Q.E.D. offered John Syer 's services to First Division Queen s Park Rangers for a period ot six weeks. The results surprised the whole club.

'It's like living in a glass cage,' says 42-year-old Christine Harding , who went totally deaf two years ago. But there's a slender hope on the horizon, if she becomes one of the few people in Britain to benefit from a small device called a cochlea implant. For some people it has brought back at least some sounds into their world of silence. Q.E.D. followed Christine as she learned to come to terms with going deaf and having the implant fitted. Would it work or would she have to cope with disappointment?

Are you an Aspirer, Reformer, Succeeder or Mainstreamer? Could this explain why you fly British Airways, read the Guardian, use the Halifax or prefer Legal and General insurance? Or perhaps you are an Individualist, which might explain why you drink Guinness? Lifestyle analysis is just one of the new weapons in the adman's arsenal - which includes methods as diverse as psychod rawing - or even psychodrama. Q.E.D. meets one member from the four lifestyle groups, and looks at the research techniques Guinness used to design their latest campaign.

If you thought that women's liberation had ended the arguments, forget it. Ever since anyone can remember, men and women have been at each other's throats. But are the sexes basically the same underneath; or are there really fundamental differences between us? With the men led by Stuart Hall and the women under Faith Brown's guidance, Q.E.D. decided to find out - by making the sexes fight it out in a series of special games, designed to test all kinds of abilities. The psychologists reckon they know who will win what; but will they be proved right? If you want to find out if yours is the superior sex - join the fun and the heat of the battle; and see how comfortably you can accept the revealing results.

At the Cleveland Metropolitan Hospital, Dr Robert White is the popular genius whose brain surgery saves countless lives. But to the anti-vivisectionists who bombard him with obscene letters and phone calls, he is the infamous research scientist who once transplanted one monkey's body on to another monkey's head. The hybrid creature survived for over a week. Dr White now believes that the next 50 years will see the first human body transplants. David Filkin went to America to find out more about Dr White and his extraordinary ideas.

Forget the turbochargers; leave the normally aspirated cars at home. For this race, you couldn't even use petrol. To get from Darwin to Adelaide, across the sun-baked interior of Australia, the rules said you had to rely on whatever energy was freely available. The hippies from Hawaii expected wind as well as sun, while the most sophisticated car had an armadillo's coat of gallium arsenide. The competition was fierce but friendly, the journey full of unexpected trials and tribulations. But everyone enjoyed racing with the sun.

First of two programmes A Completely Bad Luck Situation Desperately sick babies are given a last chance to live by the doctors and nurses at London's Brompton Hospital. When newborn Dale Bruin was rushed into their care last summer, his parents learned that the baby's only hope was a new and risky operation which might fail. This extraordinary film follows their story as the Brompton fought for the life of baby Dale.

An Everyday Miracle 2: Back to the Menders After their newborn baby's open heart surgery, Mandy and Jeff Bruin watch anxiously as the specialist nurses of Brompton Hospital s Paediatric intensive care unit work around the clock to Preserve the tiny life swinging in the balance. In these critical hours, no one knows what the outcome will be.

Why do we feel better after a good weep? What makes us cry for joy, or grief, or triumph? What use are tears? If we knew why we cry, perhaps we could find new ways to treat dry-eye disease or handle stress. Dr Bill Frey is looking for the causes of crying at his Dry Eye and Tear Research Centre in Minnesota. But before he starts work, he faces a major problem - how can he get people to weep when he wants?

John Davidson, calls his mother a slut, he swears at policemen, and he spits habitually. When 16-year-old John walks down the high street of his home town, Galashiels, local people turn away or cross the road to avoid him. John has Tourette syndrome, a rare nervous disorder whose symptoms are what 'normal' people regard as abusive and antisocial behaviour. As John turns from boy to man, how will he cope with a disease that isolates him so distinctively from the rest of society? This intimate portrait follows John and his family through their daily struggle with an illness that makes everyday social contact a battleground.

Is the riddle of the Turin Shroud solved at last? Scientific dating says its cloth was made after AD1250. The Shroud is a medieval fake. The mystery is over. Or is it? Where was the Shroud made? How? Why has it many details that ought to have been unknown to a forger 600 years ago? Are there clues to be gained from a present-day parallel to the Shroud - the imprint ot a dead man's body which appeared in a Merseyside hospice eight years ago.'

Weightlifter David Morgan , Commonwealth Champion and record holder, was as keen as anyone for his brother Tony to try to follow in his footsteps; not just for the fame and glory, but because he had a hunch it might help cure a problem. Tony suffered from epilepsy. Weightlifting has changed Tony's life. His athletic career took off and he became the youngest British champion ever. And at the same time the number of epileptic fits decreased steadily. Tony has now not had any since 1985. Q.E.D. sought specialist help to try to discover whether weightlifting could really be responsible for keeping his epilepsy under control.

Q.E.D.'s latest look at the life of a Falklands soldier. Simon Weston 's war was over when the Argentinian bombs struck the Sir Galahad. He had been burnt over 46 per cent of his body. He was terribly scarred but his own personal war against his injuries had only just begun. Simon's initial struggle was charted in two award-winning Q.E.D. films, Simon's War and Simon 's Peace. Now, filmed over the last three years, Simon's Triumph marks the emergence of a very different character, who no longer looks back. 'I am no war hero,' he says. 'I'm just Simon Weston , scars and all.'

You can pick a good astronaut, they say, by knowing 'the right stuff when you see it. But can you pick a top executive just as surely by merely studying his writing? More and more British firms are using graphology secretly to help them select their managers; yet many scientists would say that this art of interpreting handwriting is about as sensible as reading tea leaves. Q.E.D. ran a special series of tests to find out the truth. Should your future career depend on how you dot the 'i's and cross the 't's?

'You can imagine you're an underwater explorer wandering through reefs of red seaweed.' But you're not - you're an orthopaedic surgeon repairing a torn cartilage. Surgery has changed direction. With the help of the magical telescope, x-rays and ultrasound, 'keyhole surgery' are no longer dirty words but a highly desirable goal.

Is it possible for a person to burst into flames and be reduced to ashes without sign of struggle or panic and without damaging any of the surrounding materials? Could there be some chemical or electrical imbalance in the body which leads to a kind of spontaneous combustion? But if the fire does not start inside the body, how can traditional science explain away the development of a blaze hot enough to reduce bone to ash without damaging a house? Q.E.D. meets firemen and police officers who have discovered the bizarre remains after these puzzling deaths; and scientists who attempt to set up experiments that might explain the phenomenon.

Ben Johnson believed in anabolic steroids; so did other banned athletes. But now there is evidence that these drugs' only real effect could be all in the mind. Backed up by the personal experiences of international athletes David Jenkins and AI Oerter, the results of scientific trials point to a startling possibility: despite positive drug tests, athletes may win titles entirely due to talent.

Alun's brother died of it at 34; so did his sister; Alun is past his 34th birthday and as he says, living on borrowed time. FA is Friedreich's Ataxia; sweet says Alun Jones , because of the diabetes he suffers along with it. Sweet FA is the title of his autobiography; but it could be his comment on government spending on research into this progressively crippling, inherited disease. Not that Alun or his family complain. They do all they can to raise money to support the research project trying to discover the faulty gene which causes this cruel disease and find a cure. But should this kind of research be made to depend on the fund-raising efforts of sufferers and their families?

Charles is 13. Until two months ago he was hooked on his home computer, playing mindless games for up to 30 hours a week. He's typical of an increasing number of children with a new problem - computer dependency. Like most parents, Charles's mum and dad thought a computer would help him educationally and at first they encouraged him to become computer 'literate'. Now, alarming research indicates that some children, particularly boys, become so entranced with the machine that their psychological and emotional development is affected. They learn to prefer computers to people.

Everyone knows rain forests ought to be saved. But does anyone really know how? One idea comes from a scientist in Scotland: find a plant, growing only in a particular forest, which could be turned into a valuable medicine. The money the drug earned could help the local people so that they would not have to destroy the forest to survive. Professor Peter Waterman 's quest for a cancer-fighting chemical takes him into the heart of Cameroon in Africa to see if he really can help to find a rain forest remedy.

Isn't it crazy that you have to turn off your water supply just to change a tap washer? That installing a simple electric cable involves cutting channels in the wall and then redecorating the room? That we live in the worst insulated houses in northern Europe? Bob Symes is fed up with UK home design, which he believes is hopelessly irrational and out-of-date. He has his own house built, specially for Q.E.D., to prove his point.

Josiah wants to be an actor; Marissa just has to make it as a cheer leader; and as for Scott - well, he just wants to have a happier time. Because, like Josiah and Marissa, he has one obsessive problem - a body that's far too flabby and fat. Camp Shane is where American parents think that they can buy the answer to a problem their kids bought along with too much junk food. But Josiah, Marissa and Scott discover there's more to being thin than buying an instant solution - and Fat Camp, as they call it, may help in ways it never intended.

Every day Charles Tempus catches the 8.10 train to work; regular as clockwork. One morning a boy approaches him on the station platform and asks him the time. That innocent question takes Mr Tempus on a fascinating journey through time - back down the centuries in the days before clocks, and forward into the future via a black hole. On the way Mr Tempus meets young Albert Einstein who introduces him to the mysteries of relativity

As Valentine's Day roses fade and die, take stock of your love-life. Look across the room at your husband, wife or lover and ask, will we be together in two years' time? Dr John Gottman , an American psychologist, claims he can tell you the answer right now. All he needs is a weekend of your time under the scrutiny of the cameras and his tireless staff in the love laboratory.

Wherever we go we leave something unique behind - a faint trace of our own special smell. And that lingering odour is beginning to excite the interest of policemen, who think that smell evidence could help catch criminals. Q.E.D. follows the trail of British scientists working on an electronic nose which detectives could use over here; and discovers that in Holland, your personal BO can already land you behind bars!

Emmett has never been able to walk as well as other children. He has cerebral palsy. When doctors predicted he might soon need a wheelchair, the future looked grim. An American surgeon learned of his plight and offered to help. Within days, 12-year-old Emmett had flown to the United States where they used a special computerised system to pinpoint precisely what had gone wrong. The doctors decided massive surgery might help to put things right. But there were no guarantees. So it was back to the drawing board for Emmett and he was scared. Yet it was his big chance to live like other people - on his own two feet.

Director of music David Hindley has given up the comforts of academic life for the prickly hedges and fields around Cambridge. Why? Because that's where he finds the best composers! Birds live in the fast lane and what sounds like chirrup and tweet to us only reveals its amazing secrets when you slow it all down. David has done just that and transcribed birdsong for the piano. The result is not only new music; it raises deep questions.

A serious look at humour by Jonathan Miller. While helpless with laughter, have you ever wondered why you're in the grip of this strange respiratory convulsion, and what exactly triggered it? There have been many theories about the science of humour, but tonight Dr Miller suggests a few of his own. As doctor, theatre director, philosopher and comedian rolled into one, he has some intriguing and amusing insights into something we all take for granted. But is he right? See if you think he really manages to explain something that's baffled philosophers and psychologists for centuries.

Sheila has to take the decision whether or not to have a brain operation for her depression. She knows there are no guarantees it will work - but it might. More than 20 years ago she was eagerly expecting the birth of a child. The birth was normal but Sheila suffered a severe postnatal depression which eventually progressed to a seemingly incurable deep depression. After many years of enduring every form of treatment, none of which worked, Sheila was offered the last resort - surgery on her brain.

Surrogacy is often seen as a frightening emotional triangle - a rare answer to childlessness fraught with ethical problems. But in Britain, at any one time, some 20 surrogate arrangements are known to be happening. Many are successful and take place in secret. Mark and Rona lost their baby and, in a fight for Rona's life, surgeons removed her womb. Thought too old to adopt, they were determined to have a child and agonized about surrogacy. This special edition of Q.E.D. follows them from the decision to go ahead until the day when the baby was handed over.

How do you fly 63 thoroughbred horses, not to mention an elephant and a couple of giraffes, from one side of the world to the other? What happens when they get 'shipping fever' or if a stallion tries to jump out at 35,000ft? Irish veterinary surgeon Desmond Leadon travels with the flying horses; if these valuable passengers are to get from London to Sydney unscathed, it will need all his skill and foresight.

Taking two tablets with a glass of water is one thing, but diluting two drops of a drug in a bath full of water hardly sounds like potent medicine. Yet homoeopathic doctors prescribe medicines diluted in more than a million, million, million parts of water. Doctors and vets claim spectacular achievements with such remedies, and scientific trials are producing results which are not easy to explain.

Thirteen-year-old Alejandra lives in poverty in a remote corner of Nicaragua and is almost totally blind. She and her grandmother pray daily for a miracle and at last their prayers could be answered. A 'flying hospital' is on its way to Managua: an old DC8 which is aeroplane, operating theatre and teaching hospital rolled into one. Alejandra decides to travel 250 miles in the hope of a cure but in Managua she finds there are over 500 others seeking a personal miracle and only 25 are going to make it.

Murphy's Law says, 'Anything that can go wrong, will.' Nearly all of us feel this is true. But is it? Does bread really fall butter-side downwards? The other queue move faster? Do people with seats in the centre arrive last? QED puts Murphy's Law to the scientific test. Presented by Professor Ian Fells.

A film director, a young mother and a student have one thing in common. They suffer from panic attacks - feelings of intense anxiety which strike without warning, and for no logical reason. This is the story of how three people have struggled to control the panic before it totally controls them.

Most of us are prepared to trust our bodies to tons of metal hurtling into the sky - without knowing why planes don't fall back to earth. Which is why a retired taxi driver, a barmaid and a housewife find themselves challenged to learn how planes fly in only a week - with the help of a Second World War fighter, a bottle of champagne and a lawnmower.

Stephen Wiltshire is autistic, but at the age of 6, he could draw buildings in perspective. At 12, when he was first seen by eight million viewers on QED, Sir Hugh Casson called him 'probably the best child artist in Britain'. Four years later, Stephen is now a successful artist, with his own commerical agent and three books of drawings to his name. But what has his success done for him and his handicap?

As one of today's earnest executives setting out on a typical day's business, Stephen Kingsley (Andrew Sachs ) tunes into a new radio series that is trying to discover what happened to the 1960s predictions that by now we would be in an age of leisure - with a three-day working week and plenty of spare time. But Stephen's life is not like that at all. Far from the idleness and relaxation that was so confidently forecast, he is caught up instead in the relentless pace of the information age of the 90s.

Chemists sold out of vitamin pills overnight after QED first reported the sensational results of two scientific trials: vitamin and mineral supplements apparently reduced anti-social behaviour and raised the IQ of children with less than adequate diets. This scandalised some national newspapers and expert nutritionists; but the programme also prompted new trials. Today QED reveals the findings of the latest and largest of those trials - including some surprising new discoveries and the final verdict.

When Dr John Pond's not in his milkshed, he's in the laboratory at the back of his farmhouse. As a child he was fascinated by sound and played music to the cows to see if it would improve the milk yield. Now he studies the amazing power of ultra sound which can mix mayonnaise and weld heels to shoes. Introduced by Anthony Clare.

Back in the 50s, a cigarette with a pint, or during your lunch break, was the obvious way to relax - but no one knew then what it would lead to. For many smoking has now become a pernicious habit, with potentially fatal consequences. On No Smoking Day 1991, QED talks to life-long smokers, and with extraordinary film taken inside a smoker's body, takes a compelling look at how a moment's pleasure leaves its mark on human flesh.

Last year QED told the story of 12-year-old Emmett, and how an American surgeon used computers to analyse his walking disability caused by cerebral palsy. Then in a massive operation they broke his leg bones to straighten them, repositioned his muscles and tendons and when it was all over he was inches taller. But he still had a long way to go. Now a teenager, Emmett faces all the usual challenges of growing up and gaining independence. For a year QED cameras have followed his progress and this new film tells how he is discovering what it really means to stand on your own two feet - in every sense.

Granny Muriel Santilli , 79, answered an advertisement in her local paper and found herself entering an extraordinary world where her wildest dreams came true. She was actually inside the brain of a computerised simulator where impossible things happen all the time. Soon millions will be able to follow Granny into strange simulated worlds. Scientists have invented a home simulator that anyone can use; it will be in the shops next year. They say it will be even more popular than television! Narrated by Anthony Clare.

It looked as if the only chance for 13-year-old Tina [text removed] was a complete heart and lung transplant. But then she was referred to Dr Shakeel Qureshi and Professor Michael Tynan , two remarkable doctors who believed that they could perform surgery from inside the heart, without the need for a chest incision. The only problem was, they had never tried this before. When they got into the operating theatre, things did not go according to plan and they had to improvise solutions with instruments they modified themselves.

Plastic bottles, cans and milk cartons fly about as enthusiastic young engineers from Europe, USA and Japan are challenged to design and build robotic rubbish collectors from a box of bits and pieces. This hilarious international competition has a serious purpose. The young designers face the same problems, frustrations and failures as they will do in the real engineering world - it is a battle with time, materials, language and unrelenting competitors. The machines are remarkably varied. Ingenious problem-solving leads to cunning contraptions of wheels, belts and spinning limbs, in the shapes of cows, sharks and fierce toasters. The programme demonstrates the possibility of international co-operation between engineers and gives an insight into how design engineers think. Producer Adam Hart-Davis says: "The programme should give strong encouragement to women to believe that engineering is by no means a male preserve. The outcome of the competition is impossible to predict. I lost 1,000 yen on the final winner."

In her infancy, 16-year-old Laura had an operation to correct her cleft palate. Now, she has a misshapen face. To test whether early surgery was the cause of such growth problems, Michael Mars of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital visited Sri Lanka in 1984 to examine untreated adults. He discovered that, although they had normal growth, they suffered almost unintelligible speech. The nature and timing of the surgery need to be established to minimise both these problems, and Mars has since returned to Sri Lanka with a surgical team of volunteers to search for a compromise.

How do flies crawl up smooth surfaces and why do bats not fall from their perches when sleeping? Finding out how animals perform their amazing gripping feats has occupied Dr Graham Walker for 20 years. By contrast, Professor Tony Kinloch has devoted his life to developing glues for human use. In this lighthearted comparison between animal and human gripping technologies, these experts find out if man can beat nature when it comes to holding on.

Can training children in sports from an early age produce super-athletes? A Californian coach, Marv Marinovich, believes it does. He has developed a highly successful training technique which he perfected by using his own children as guinea pigs. It has turned his 21-year-old son Todd into one of the hottest properties in American football with a career that could make him a millionaire. Although his eldest daughter dropped out of the intensive training regime when she was 14, Marv has started again on his younger son, [text removed], aged 3. A former professional footballer, Marv says: "As far as I am concerned, performance is not about winning or losing but about the quality of the outcome." Producer Christopher Tau, himself the father of a young family, commends the loving and caring relationship Marv has with his children but says, "I am an athlete too, but I would never do that to my child." A British study of 450 young athletes looked at the physical and mental stress produced by intensive sports training in childhood and found that young bodies, not yet fully formed, are susceptible to serious, permanent injury. So are ambitious parents like Marv Marinovich putting their own children at risk?

Chris Brotherton is 46 when he is told he only has a few months to live. For Chris, his wife Annette, and their 10-year-old son [text removed], the following weeks are full of emotion as they cope with his illness and the strains it produces. A brain tumour affects his speech and family roles change as communication becomes difficult. But Chris fights back and they go on a last holiday. Acceptance of death is an issue we all have to face. Chris and his family made this film in the hope that it would help others in a similiar position.

Could there be a miracle cure-all wonder drug? In a kitchen at the back of a trailer in the Arizona desert a Swiss bio-chemist has developed a herbal "cure-all" medicine, using traditional native American plants. He claims his miracle elixir has successfully treated diverse conditions from cancer and chronic fatigue to ulcers and baldness. And he says that he has the patients to prove it. When documentary film-maker Henry Murray had a lump in his neck diagnosed as being a potentially malignant tumour, he decided to try alternative medicine rather than risk a dangerous six-hour operation. He spent a month in the desert trying the medicine for himself, helping in its manufacture and meeting people who believed they had been cured.