The walled garden at Gordon Castle in Fochabers produces fresh seasonal food for a thriving restaurant and cut flowers for florists, as well as healthy, home-grown fruit and vegetables for the local community. Head gardener Ed Bollom describes the challenges the team faced in creating one of the largest kitchen gardens in Britain and in growing produce in the North of Scotland.

Among the population of Selangor, in the west of peninsular Malaysia, are an indigenous coastal group, the Btsisi’. There are just 3,000 of them, sharing their coastal homeland with the largest port in the country, on an international waterway – and yet, says Dr Jarina Mohd Jani of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu who has been collaborating with them in research, they show considerable resilience in conserving their marine environment and their own culture and have lessons for us.

Recent decades have seen dramatically increased rates of conditions affecting the brain, from neurodivergence among younger people to earlier deterioration amongst older people. We've also seen a radical change in diet. Is there a connection? Yes, says Ann Roberts, of the charity Think Through Nutrition. Research from many sources includes work on improving diet in prisons.

Coral reefs, “the rainforests of the sea”, are in decline, says Dr Siti NurTahirah Jaafar of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. Rising sea temperatures cause corals to expel the algae living in their tissues. They turn white and become more disease-susceptible. But few people see the silent struggle.

The NHS's wealth of information about our health enables national patterns to be drawn about our chances of illnesses. But there are big challenges in bringing together NHS data from different sources. Health data researcher Prof. Cathie Sudlow discusses with Anna Woolman, joined by Chris Monk with first-hand experience of data and diagnosis.

Three researchers from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu - Dr Tan Chung Hong, Dr Yusri Yusuf and Dr Muhammad Hafiz Borkhanuddin - describe a beautiful underwater world, vibrantly alive. They tell the story of the living corals that build the reefs, and their spawning, often synchronised with the lunar cycle; and they describe the highly diverse and colourful fishes who make the reefs their home, and the equally colourful nudibranchs, shell-less snails of the sea, and citizen science projects to map their distribution.

Could super-humans such as Captain Marvel or Superman, and qualities such as super-strength, actually exist in reality? Could super-suits of armour be made, like Batman’s body shield or Iron Man’s AI human-interface body? And what are the chances of there being, on some far planet, alien life – and if so, how could we ever make contact, or navigate our way there?

Some people live and thrive despite harbouring what for others are lethal mutations. Their protection comes from further genetic mutations. Dr Stephen Friend, who led the team that cloned the first human cancer susceptibility gene, describes the search for ‘genetic heroes’ whose special genetic abilities may give clues towards new ways to tackle diseases.