The different qualities of barley for making malt for brewing and distilling are explained by industry experts Marie Stanton, Eric Walker, and Dr Tim Dolan. Over-18s only, booking essential. Tickets £12. Organised by the Institute of Brewing and Distilling

Methane bubbling up from the seabed, gas explosions blowing craters in the tundra – is a thaw coming to the great Arctic sweep of frozen rock and soil? Prof. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University provides the latest news and images.

Mountain rescue team go out in all weathers - and part of the reason for their survival involves physics, as Alison McLure of the Institute of Physics in Scotland, a member of Tayside Mountain Rescue Team, explains.

What is our world made of? Molecules and atoms, quarks and leptons? Prof. Alexander Lenz of Durham University introduces particle physics research at centres like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and its consequences for our understanding of the cosmos.

John Firth, born in 1838 at Redland in the parish of Firth, recorded a wealth of stories about Orkney traditional farming life. Dr Tom Rendall describes harvesting and milling, courtship and wedding customs, with readings by Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon and Brian Flett.

It’s a cloud of rubidium atoms at Strathclyde, at a temperature of less than 0.001 degree above absolute zero. Prof. W.J. Firth of Strathclyde University describes how to get atoms so cold – and what we might do with them.

Traditional remedies used some unusual ingredients. Alongside many plants now considered weeds, medicines might include ox gall or badger fat, marble, lead or urine … How do they stand up to scientific scrutiny? Ethnobotanical researcher Anna Canning takes a look at old treatments and new insights – and why we […]

100 years ago early aircraft were taking aerial photographs above wartime positions – though angles of approach made analysis slow and difficult. But Orkney artist Stanley Cursiter put his training in perspective to good use, as Prof. Tom Stevenson and Dorothy Brankin of the Museum of Communication, with Sandy Firth […]

An opportunity to hear about the chemistry of the process and the role of the herbs from sensory scientist Dr Irene Baxter of the Scotch Whisky Research Institute, and to see it at first-hand with samples of the product to try. Over-18s only, numbers limited, booking essential. Tickets £10. Organised […]

Nobel laureate Prof. Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University with the story of the ideas that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson – in conversation with fellow physicist and writer Dr Graham Farmelo. Tickets £6 & £4.

Quantum pioneer, predictor of antimatter, Nobel laureate – the physicist Paul Dirac was a man of very few words, and one of the strangest geniuses in the history of science. Dramatised lecture by his biographer Graham Farmelo, with actor David Sumner, co-founder of the Swallow Theatre in Galloway.