Spiders are always big in the autumn: they've had all summer to grow.
Alice Roberts
I was a goth in my student days. I dyed my hair black, but it came out grey, with a blue scalp. Then I dyed it red and it came out fuschia pink.
And when you take something like the changing colour of autumn leaves and start to ask why, you're starting off on an intellectual journey which will take you beyond that moment of visual satisfaction, while robbing nothing from that experience.
Archaeology can be overlooked as a discipline, I think, but it's incredibly important to have this other way of approaching the past - not just through historical documents, but through actual physical remains - objects, buildings and the layout of our towns.
Looking in detail at human anatomy, I'm always left with two practically irreconcilable thoughts: our bodies are wonderful, intricate masterpieces; and then - they are cobbled-together, rag-bag, sometimes clunking machines.
I was a fairly strict vegetarian - I ate eggs and dairy products but nothing that would involve killing an animal to furnish the food on my plate.
Chance is hugely significant in biology. In fact, the presence of apparent randomness in so many aspects of biology - from mutations in DNA to the chance involved in that one sperm reaching that one egg that became you - suggests that randomness is useful, even necessary, in very many cases.
The scientific method is about trying to remove our own bias and subjectivity, and be as objective as possible. But then you can put it back into context and you're allowed to be emotional and human about the way you engage with it.
I find humanism to be the most rational and positive philosophy for life. And it's not a new thing at all - the history of humanist thought is deep and inspiring.
So I think as a biologist I would like us to focus on this planet and finding solutions to sustaining humanity, to improving people's lives globally, but doing our absolute utmost to preserve as much biodiversity as we can, knowing that we have already been responsible for the loss of thousands of species.
Pagan Romans started their midwinter celebrations with the feast of Saturnalia on 17 December, ending them with a new year festival, the Kalendae Januariae, at the start of January - both were celebrated with parties and the exchange of gifts.
When I started doing television, I was very aware my clothes would be obvious and it was a great opportunity to promote brands which are made with respect to people and the environment.
I love Christmas. At this very special time of year, when the sun appears only fleetingly to those of us living in the northern hemisphere, I feel a deep connection with ancient ancestors.
You're not tapping into the widest possible pool of talent if you're shutting some people out of particular careers.
Of course 'Horizon' had made an impact on me from a young age, but it was also humbling to meet and interview eminent scientists, and hear their high opinion of the series and of the science presented on the BBC more generally.
In Luke, shepherds go to find Jesus. In Matthew, an unspecified number of wise men, sometimes portrayed as kings, arrive. Nativity plays usually throw all the elements together, with kings and shepherds beating a path to the stable.
Autumn is much redder in North America and east Asia than it is in northern Europe, and this can't be explained by temperature differences alone. These areas also have a greater proportion of ancient tree lineages surviving: trees have gone extinct at a higher rate in Europe compared with those other areas.
Science plays a huge role in our lives. We're surrounded by technology, we depend on it.
It's incredible that the layout of the centre of Chester, for instance, is still essentially that of the original Roman fort.
Around 4000BC, the Mesolithic, hunter-gatherer way of life here gave way to a more settled, farming existence. Those Neolithic people built wooden trackways across the salt marshes and reed beds.
In our evolutionary narratives, the organism itself often seems to play a passive role: a powerless victim, almost, of changes to its environment or mutations in its genes.
As well as tasting fantastic, blackberries are good for you. Anthocyanin isn't just a pigment, it's a flavonoid, a heroic antioxidant! The stuff of superfoods!
In fact, humans have less variation genetically than chimpanzees.
I don't think anyone is saying that we should be treating boys and girls exactly the same and that we should try to eliminate all differences. What the psychologists who do this work are saying is we should be aware of it and careful about it, especially if we think it could be limiting choices.
At Bristol I found it quite difficult to continue trying to balance three things - teaching, research and public engagement, for which television was obviously the most prominent part.
Embryology reveals surprising similarities between early embryos of seemingly quite different animals. And it also shows that some structures that may look very different later on have fundamental similarities in the way they form.
I have family connections with Salisbury through my godmother. Her sister lived there, so I have very fond memories of visiting the city as a child.
I grew up in the Seventies; my dad is an aeronautical engineer and my mum was an English and arts teacher and for a while my family had to exist on one salary.
When I was in my 20s, and even though I was studying medicine, I didn't ever really think that my body would fail. Now I'm in my 40s, I have to face a different reality - I, like everyone else, am slowly falling apart.
I'm slightly obsessed with Moomins. They were my specialist subject on BBC's 'Celebrity Mastermind' a few years ago!
Always attempting to tame and subjugate nature is not the solution. But the latest science is helping us to map out a path across this shifting landscape in uncertain times, showing us how to work with natural forces, not against them.
Evolutionary biologists have long pondered the phenomenon of the changing colours of autumn leaves. It's possible that the red pigments are manufactured in the leaf as a side-effect of something else that's happening at this time.
You don't need to go to Rome, Prague or Vienna to find wonderful architecture, amazing stories and suprising, hidden gems.
Easter is an ancient festival of rebirth, but it's also an excellent excuse for eating eggs. I really like eggs, of both the chocolate and chicken variety. But the chocolate ones, you must admit, can sustain only a fleeting interest. A sweet, sugary hit - and then it's gone.
I gave up meat when I was 18, and it was an ethical decision. I loved the taste, and went on holiday to Greece, fairly gorging myself on lamb souvlaki before taking the plunge into a meatless existence.
If a group of humans began to run regularly, perhaps allowing them to hunt or scavenge more effectively, anatomical changes would follow, especially among the still-developing youngsters.
While planting woodlands along rivers has been shown to work in small areas, it has been unclear whether it would be effective on a larger scale. But computer modelling indicates that restoring forests on floodplains could slow floodwaters and reduce the height of the flood downstream.
Science is about questioning things.
Just as your own existence is unlikely and far from inevitable, the evolution of modern humans as a species depended on a whole string of chance events - some happening in the environments our ancestors inhabited, and some inside their own bodies, including random mutations in their DNA.
It seems that humans have been enjoying the taste and health benefits of blackberries for thousands of years. Gathered blackberries have been found at Neolithic sites, while a preserved iron age bog body, known as Haraldskaer Woman, provides definite evidence of blackberry ingestion.
I was effectively unemployed after my son was born. I resigned from Bristol because I wasn't happy with the way my career was going then discovered I was pregnant when I was out of a job, but I was freelancing.
Stonehenge is famously aligned with midsummer sunrise, and possibly also intentionally with midwinter sunset.
The colour of a British wood in autumn is predominantly yellow. There are relatively few European trees which have red leaves in the autumn. But there are splashes of crimson or rust-red colours from a few indigenous trees, like the rowan, as well as from introduced species, like the North American red oak.
I'm strict about taking nuts and dried fruit with me and, if I have access to milk, small packets of porridge to eat in a break.
Look what consumer power has done with organic food; we can do the same with clothes.
I'm a firm believer in teaching children to manage risk.
So I had this fascination with old bones and being able to diagnose disease in old bones. And I was doing that, and started to do bone reports for the Channel 4 series 'Time Team'.
The paleo diet is utter nonsense - it is such pseudoscience.
There should be regulation that prevents all schools, not just state schools, from teaching creationism because it is indoctrination, it is planting ideas into children's heads. We should be teaching children to be much more open-minded.
It's tempting to look back into history with rose-tinted glasses. Most people in the Stone Age didn't live anywhere near as long as we're living now. Today we can enjoy a more wide-ranging diet and we have fruit and vegetables available all year round.
