Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

This month, signs that cancers communicate with the brain to alter mood, why antibodies are unreliable in research, evidence that social training can cut stress and boost brain volume, and agents...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/cancer-mood-control-and-birth-products-blocking-pain

In this episode, why approaches to cancer care need a pro-active approach in future, the opportunities arising for the cancer vaccine space, competency-based medical training, the environmental c...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/cambridge-prisms-podcast/future-cancer-care-and-cost-large-animal-extinction

This month, Chris Smith hears how blood-thirsty bacteria sniff out wounds to trigger infections, how ants navigate at night, how male and female brains respond differently to starvation, and infl...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/vampire-bacteria-hangry-males-and-ants-using-moonlight

This month, evidence that the microbiome is controlling blood pressure - so will we treat hypertension with probiotics in future? Also, plastic is everywhere and an urgent environmental threat, b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/cambridge-prisms-podcast/microbiomes-control-blood-pressure-and-cost-water

This month, how animals hibernate and evidence that muscle myosin makes its own heat in the cold, brain scans to reveal how ketamine relieves resistant depression, the way the brain changes when ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/hibernation-ketamine-and-aphantasia

A problem that's been puzzling scientists for decades is the way our bodies recognise cold stimuli, and researchers at the University of Michigan have finally got to the bottom of it. They've ide...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/proteins-responsible-feeling-cold-revealed

This month we hear what orangutans can tell us about the origins of human speech, we ask if science making life even harder for dyslexics, where do the scientists we train end up and do they stay...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/apes-reveal-language-origins-and-being-dyslexic-science

This month the connections that human inhabitants have to the coast, why we're still in the middle of a worsening extinction crisis despite international laws and treaties designed to protect nat...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/cambridge-prisms-podcast/making-waves-about-coastline-conservation-and-plastic-waste

In the eLife Podcast this month, signs that bees are oblivious to pesticides in nectar, sea anemone stinging strategies, a new means of cell-cell communication to share growth factors and other s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/bees-cant-taste-pesticides-and-how-albatrosses-get-aloft

Better awareness of the precious resource that is water, getting a grip on coastal ecosystems and the impact of pollution, why recycled plastics are a threat for food packaging and kitchen utensi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/cambridge-prisms-podcast/recycled-plastics-pollute-food-and-value-water

This time we hear how many species are being driven to extinction by human trade, why clinical psychology needs an update for the 21st Century, how non-specialists can help to plug the gap in men...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/cambridge-prisms-podcast/wildlife-trade-extinctions-and-21st-century-psychology

Ken Mcginley was there during some of the first tests of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s. We were lucky enough to hear his story... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientist...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/surviving-fusion-bomb

There are many factors that might affect the way we make decisions: our age, our past experiences, even our mood that day. But now, a new study has suggested that the language we speak also plays...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/does-our-language-affect-our-decision-making

Comparatively, we know an awful lot about life on the surface of planet earth. We know a lot less about the extent of life in our oceans, and we know even less about the life festering deep benea...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/microbial-life-deep-underground

Babies born during the Covid-19 lockdowns are behind on their language development. That's the finding of a recent study comparing infants born during the pandemic with similar children born in p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-pandemic-affected-child-development

A new non invasive technique to pick up breast cancer has been unveiled by UK scientists. Breast cancer is the most diagnosed form cancer in the UK. Dense breast tissue, particularly common in yo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-ultrasound-technique-breast-imaging

Apopo is a charity that trains African giant pouched rats for humanitarian purposes, with a view to combating some of the challenges faced by countries in the developing world. Originally, they t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/search-and-rescue-rats

Did you end up in your dream job? Or did you end up pursuing a career quite intensely for some reason that eludes you? Perhaps the media representation of your profession had a part to play. Shri...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/tv-influencing-careers

There's news of a huge rift in the world of video games... EA Sports, who made the first ever FIFA football game in 1993, have announced that they will no longer be licensing the FIFA name. Chris...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/fifa-fall-out-ea

Now, I want you to cast your mind back to that first lockdown (if you can bear it) and to think about the ways you chose to fill all that new found free time. Perhaps, like the participants of a ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/did-lockdown-make-us-more-creative

Dingoes are native Australian dogs, although how and when they got to Australia isn't known. They were certainly already there by the time the first western explorers visited the continent, but f...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dog-and-dingo-dna-sequences

Coffee prices are on the rise and the plant is said to decline by 60% before 2050, meaning new coffee alternatives are being considered in order to give us that caffeine hit. Harry Lewis speaks t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/coffee-without-coffee-beans

If I asked you to give up one of your five senses, which one would you choose? Chances are, instead of giving up your ability to see or hear, your sense of smell would be in pole position for the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/recreating-smells-past

The world has a huge problem with plastics. While they are a materials scientist's dream in terms of their properties, they are an environmentalist's worst nightmare, because they don't break dow...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-method-recycling-plastics

Researchers have been studying DNA as a method to store binary data. As data generation continues to increase in the information age, we need new methods to store it. DNA is extremely robust and ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/data-storage-dna

Playing games may be something you do in your spare time or in the queue at the supermarket, but striving for that elusive high score can also now contribute to science! Julia Ravey grabbed her m...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/solving-puzzles-help-cancer-research

There are over 7,000 documented languages in the world to date, and now we might have another to add to the list: the one spoken by pigs. No, this is not an April Fool come early. Elodie Mandel-B...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pig-grunts-indicate-their-emotions

Researchers from Indiana University studied the reactions of volatile compounds released when cleaning with ozone in the air. They found the reactions led to formation of nanoparticles classified...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/indoor-pollution-cleaning

Nuclear weapons are at the forefront of news but what are they and how do they work? Anoushka Handa reports... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dangers-nuclear-weapons

As NASA aims to send humans back to the moon in the upcoming years, research on how to supply oxygen to future settlements on the moon are underway. Oxygen can be genearted from lunar resources s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/creating-oxygen-moon

Washing our hands has become paramount during the pandemic, but the Romans didn't seem to bestow any importance to this, leading to parasites and infections. Anoushka Handa spoke to Sophie Rabino...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/roman-faeces-housing-fossilised-parasites

Blood clotting is important in preventing excessive bleeding, but for millions of people, it can also mean increased risk of mortality due to certain medical conditions. Blood thinning medication...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/blood-clot-tests-smartphones

Have you ever got a horrible mosquito bite whilst on holiday and wondered 'why me again?' And was your travel buddy someone who never got one? It could very well be to do with their fashion sense...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/shades-blue-stop-mosquito-biting-you

There's a growing body of evidence that birds can detect magnetic fields like the one around the Earth, possibly by "seeing" them. And this, researchers think, accounts for how migrating birds, l...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/magnetic-fields-guide-migratory-birds

Greenfield housing developments are residential communities built upon land which was not previously occupied by anything else. These modern homes are often very energy efficient, but a new repor...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/car-dependence-greenfield-housing

Krzysztof wrote in to ask 'Why don't plants freeze to death during Winter?' and James Tytko tracked down Professor Howard Griffiths, from the University of Cambridge, to break the ice on this que...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/question-week/why-dont-plants-freeze-death-winter

Black holes are known for their awesome destructive powers, ripping stars apart piece by piece. But now, scientists have seen evidence of a black hole helping to form stars. Using the Hubble Tele...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/black-hole-seen-forming-new-stars

Planting trees has a great impact on creating a greener environment. The Queen's Green Canopy is an initiative to encourage people to plant a tree in honour of the Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee....

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/trees-jubilee

Mathematicians Ville Salo and Ilkke Toermae from Finland have solved a long-standing problem in the field of cellular automata (The Game of Life). Despite being quite simple systems to describe, ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/game-life-still-revealing-secrets

Memories form a large part of human interaction. Scents, tastes and touch all can invoke us to remember particular events. But how do we know the order of these events? How do you remember that t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/organising-our-memories

Blood smear analysis is a repetitive, laborious, and time consuming job. Research at the University of Cambridge has led to developing a 3D printed device which both speeds up the smearing proces...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/automating-blood-smears

It's the new year, and with that comes a tradition to commit to new year's resolutions. But the typical goals of giving up drinking, or losing weight, can be hard to achieve, especially without s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/making-new-years-resolutions-smart

The astonishing discovery of this jurassic era creature has been covered on our show before, but this recording features special insight into the dig itself. Mark Evans from the British Antarctic...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ichthyosaur-found-rutland

Tropical rainforests are deforested at an alarming rate to make way for cultivating crops and rearing livestock. But what happens when these forest areas are abandoned and left to recover in thei...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/reforestation-re-evaluation

Changing the way the brain controls how we sleep, as a new study suggests, might be a way to cut the risk of Alzheimer's Disease. Alzheimer's is the commonest form of a group of conditions known ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sleep-and-alzheimers

Katie King interviews Huw James, from the Royal Astronomical Society, about the reality of the chances planet-killing asteroids could collide with Earth. What these objects are, how they are foun...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/do-asteroids-pose-real-threat

Hearing and listening... is there a difference? I am sure that we have all been guilty of letting our minds drift out of a conversation before realising and immediately trying to tune back in. Ne...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/listening-vs-hearing

Understanding the human brain and how it completes complex tasks, like processing other people's speech as well as producing its own, is a complex task in and of itself. As it stands, neuroscienc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/language-and-brain

Astronomers believe that nearly every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its centre, this being true for our very own Milky Way. These objects exert such strong gravitational forces on the m...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-impact-black-hole

During IVF or in-vitro fertilisation, sperm and eggs are mixed together in a dish to produce fertilised embryos, one or two of which are placed in the uterus where the hope is they will trigger a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ivf-embryos-are-more-successful-expected

While the coronavirus pandemic is at the forefront of our minds, it's not the only health crisis looming on the horizon. Antimicrobial resistance has been called the "hidden pandemic". One of the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/making-antibiotics-more-effective

Dr Chris Smith joins Indira Naidoo on the ABC's Nightlife programme to discuss the latest developments in science and answer questions from listeners. This time they look at the difficult decisio...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/omicron-update-whats-store-australia

Us humans are thought to have appeared on Earth around 300,000 years ago. But how much have we changed since then? New research from Shanghai Jiao Tong University has found many of our most compl...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/recent-evolution-human-beings

2021 marks 100 years since insulin was first discovered. The World Health Organisation estimates that 422 million people around the world have diabetes, a disease where the body either can't prod...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/100-years-insulin

More than 50% of the world's population now lives in urban areas and, in recent years, many major cities have been hit with extreme weather events due to the effects of climate change, like the f...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cooling-down-rapidly-warming-cities

Cities have been found to be warming at faster rates than the rest of the planet due to the materials used such as concrete absorbing heat more readily than organic materials. This is known as th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/tree-growth-extended-urban-jungles

As we near Christmas, we will be subjected to a fair few more hugs than usual! Some of them can be great, and others... just downright awkward. But what makes a bad hug? What makes a good hug? Ne...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-hugs

We know that sleep is critical for our physical and mental wellbeing, but as it turns out, the answer doesn't simply lie in the number of hours we spend unconscious each night. New research from ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sleep-schedules-healthier-hearts

Virologist Chris Smith talks with Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill on Saturday 27th November as the world contemplates the discovery of the Covid-19 variant that the WHO has dubbed "Omicron"...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/omicron-variant-concern-what-do-we-know

Earth's largest animals, whales, need a lot of food... that goes without saying. But, new research from a team at Stanford University have found that whales need 10-20 tonnes of food on a feeding...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/whales-eat-and-poop-more-we-thought

Now this might have flown under your radar, but last Wednesday NASA launched the DART mission, a spacecraft on a one-way collision course with an asteroid, in the world's first full-scale planeta...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/nasas-planetary-defence-test

Covid cases in many European countries are suddenly substantially up. But in a dramatic role reversal, the UK has gone from the standout Covid-19 bad boy of Europe to one of the better performers...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-surges-europe

Covid is surging across Europe, but what's causing it, and will the UK follow suit, or are Europe hot on our heels? Should vaccines be mandatory, and would vaccine passports work? Why does Covid-...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-does-covid-19-vaccine-protection-wane

When two atoms join together, the laws of physics tell us that a large amount of energy will be released, but the experiments performed so far by scientists to achieve nuclear fusion have always ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/fusion-experiment-yields-new-record-energy

The first part of understanding a new language is working out where one word stops and the next word starts out of a string of syllables. Researchers at ELTE University in Hungary have been looki...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dogs-can-pick-out-words-speech

Recently Facebook announced a name change for the company to Meta, which comes during the midst of a marketing plug by Mark Zuckerberg for his new take on an augmented reality universe. Facebook'...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/facebooks-metaverse

We talk a lot about proteins on this programme - what they do, how they work - but have you ever wondered what they sound like? A group of scientists at the National University of Singapore have ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-does-oxytocin-sound

Antibiotics are such an important part of modern medicine but their effectiveness has been waning in the last few decades as certain bacteria, so called superbugs, have become resistant to multip...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/antibiotics-upgraded-tackle-superbugs

Have you ever noticed that you take one particular walking route to the shops, only to take a completely different route on the way back? If so, you might not be alone...based on recent paper pub...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/humans-navigate-inefficiently-cities

The Earthshot Prize is an ambitious environmental program created by His Royal Highness Prince William to find and develop solutions for the climate emergency. This year's prizes were awarded las...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hydrogen-electrolyser-wins-earthshot-prize

"Test! Test! Test!" was the instruction from the World Health Organisation when the Covid-19 pandemic began to take hold around the world. Now scientists at MIT think they might have a solution, ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-nanotube-based-sensor

New research published this week has turned what we know about Alzheimer's disease progression on its head. Instead of the disease gradually spreading through the brain causing symptoms to get wo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-alzheimers-disease-unfolds

Wild water swimming is becoming ever more popular and, according to a new study published recently in Cell Reports Medicine, combining dips in cold water with time in a hot sauna could have poten...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/potential-health-benefits-winter-swimming

Who doesn't like to pick up a cold drink from the fridge and sit down to watch a show on their laptop or TV? Electrical appliances have made our lives easier and richer and yet, as much as we lov...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/e-waste-day-what-do-old-electronics

A form of cultured cell, known as a HeLa cell, is at the centre of a lawsuit that is being brought against a large scientific company that uses these cells. HeLa cells are named after the person ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hela-cells-do-you-own-your-own-body-parts

Pain relief after surgery is a major headache as we don't have a lot of effective, and safe, options. Opioids in particular, like morphine, are very addictive and cause hundreds of thousands of d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-scientists-podcast/new-painkiller-local-and-long-lasting-relief

He said he'd introduce them, now Boris Johnson has stepped back from mandating vaccine passports across England for venues like nightclubs. But what's provoked this viral volte-face? Also, saliva...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/vaccines-passports-england-shown-door

Fluoride is the stuff in toothpaste that helps strengthen teeth. But if there's too much fluoride in the water it softens bones, and children become susceptible to bone deformities. It's very dif...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/self-assembling-filter-can-remove-fluoride

Twitter has been the subject of another study, looking at how people's tendency to post tweets in moral outrage is affected by other people on the site. Increasingly in recent years, celebrities ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/moral-outrage-twitter-contagious

Scientists and doctors are always after good quality human cells for research and therapeutic purposes, but these can be hard to come by in sufficient quantities. Now, synthetic biology company b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bitbio-new-source-human-cells

Many of us love putting out bird seed and watching birds feast away, and feel we're doing a good deed too, but a new paper out of Manchester Metropolitan University suggests we may actually be do...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/feeding-birds-could-be-causing-harm

Most schools across the UK are open and children are heading back to their classrooms. But to what extent will this affect the Covid case rates across the country and what can we do to avoid disr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/schools-causing-covid-surges

Quite soon after the pandemic first struck a significant number of people began to complain of persistent symptoms in the aftermath of being infected with the new coronavirus. These manifestation...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/long-covid-children-what-we-know-so-far

We often look for water on remote planets and moons because, as far as we know, it's a requirement for life. Now a team of researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope to scrutinise Jupiter's lar...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/water-vapour-found-ganymede

Is Delta more deadly, or just transmitting more rapidly? And are the vaccines we're using likely to defend against future coronavirus variants? Also, does it matter that levels of antibody dimish...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-can-nz-do-about-delta

Researchers have reported a case of antibiotic-resistant bacteria passing between dogs and their owners. And these bacteria aren't just resistant to any antibiotic - they're resistant to colistin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-dogs

Chris Smith joins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill to talk Covid-19, including the impact of the July 19th UK Freedom Day on Covid case rates. They also touch on vaccine performance, variant...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/uk-and-freedom-day-what-numbers-say

Although Covid-19 is dominating the headlines perpetually at the moment, it's very important not to lose sight of other significant diseases that don't yet have vaccines and do have a higher cumu...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-malaria-drug-cures-one-dose

Earlier this year a devastating heatwave in the pacific northwest of the United States killed almost 200 people with record-shattering temperatures; and, in 2019, the UK recorded its highest ever...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/increasing-likelihood-extreme-heatwaves

A question we're being asked quite a lot is whether the extra lengths we're going to in terms of hygiene to protect us from COVID-19 might cause us immune problems later because we're living live...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hygiene-doesnt-harm-immune-development

The general view is that waterways, such as rivers and underground water sources, will dry up during severe drought - but eventually recover and resume their normal flow when the rains return. Bu...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/rivers-dont-always-recover-after-drought

An ancient skull, uncovered decades ago in China, has recently been revealed to be possibly the closest ever relative to humankind. It's called "Dragon Man", and based on trace uranium inside the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dragon-man-skull-our-closest-relative

Few animals inspire the imagination like Tyrannosaurus rex. And the mighty tyrannosaurs did dominate the lands that eventually became central Asia and western North America for millions of years....

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/t-rex-teens-fill-mid-size-predator-gap

Previously, researchers knew that sharks can travel back and forth across entire oceans, accurately returning to specific locations. But what we didn't know was whether they memorise these routes...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sharks-use-earths-magnetic-field-map

New technology may help save bees by providing an antidote for deadly pesticides. The new solution allows beekeepers to feed their bees 'pollen patties', a pollen-sized microparticle filled with ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pesticide-antidote-might-help-struggling-bees

Covid viruses, vaccines and variants: Chris Smith talks to Radio New Zealand National to bring Kim Hill up to speed with the latest developments on the pandemic front, including the recent case i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-viruses-vaccines-and-variants

Eastern Australia is currently in the grips of a mouse plague. Mice live everywhere people do, often undetected. Right now though, highly favourable conditions have caused mice populations to exp...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mouse-plague-australia

Scientists have reported on some unusual things flying in space recently. In one paper, sperm, stored aboard the International Space Station for the last 5 years, has been brought back to Earth a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sperm-and-squid-space

The world is always on the lookout for new drugs - but they're not easy to make. Synthesising them is often an expensive and prolonged process. But what if we could employ a miniature assistant t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cells-reprogrammed-make-synthetic-polymers

This month: how hummingbirds hum, how elephants evolved anti-cancer genes so they can sustain big bodies, gorillas that grow up without their mothers, and why deforestation causes peaks and then ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/motherless-gorillas-and-how-hummingbirds-hum

For thousands of years, humans have used traditional mining techniques involving sinking tunnels or large pits to recover relatively small amounts of useful metals like gold and copper. What rema...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-process-may-transform-mining

If you live in the UK, you should soon be able to drink vodka... from Chernobyl! Which might sound like a radioactive nightmare, but the stuff is - supposedly - completely safe to drink. Not only...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/vodka-chernobyl-its-way-uk

It's often hardest to think when you've been working all day - especially if your job involves making lots of decisions. Psychologists call this decision fatigue. And evidence has shown that the ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/loan-applications-rejected-more-around-midday

The mantis shrimp is a sea creature with a particular party piece. While our eyes are sensitive to three colours, red, green and blue, which our brain uses to make the full rainbow of colours we ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/camera-based-shrimp-eye-sees-cancer-cells

Alexandra Elbakyan is the founder of the website SciHub, and it came out this week that she is being investigated by the FBI. You see, SciHub is an illegal venture: it makes research papers avail...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/scihub-are-they-stealing-your-data

Noise pollution can be difficult to live with, and it turns out that plants are also impacted by too much noise, although not in the way you might expect. Jenny Phillips from Texas A&M in San Ant...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/plants-affected-noise-pollution

Anorexia nervosa is a cruel, complex and serious mental health condition. It involves deliberately losing weight in order to keep body weight as low as possible. And through investigating brain c...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/biological-target-future-anorexia-drugs

When they're trying to piece together our understanding of ancient Humans and Neanderthals, scientists often have to rely on artifacts found in caves. What scientists wish they had more of was an...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ancient-dna-extracted-cave-dirt

Each year 80,000 patients are hospitalised in the US for paracetamol overdose, the leading cause of liver damage in the US and Europe. The current treatment is effective at treating the liver dam...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-treatment-paracetamol-overdose

Face masks have their place, but what's really needed right now is a breath of fresh air and a dose of common sense to control Covid-19, as Chris Smith explains... Like this podcast? Please help ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/science-features/masks-beach-and-beer-gardens-cmon

New research has found a gene that looks to be the reason why rabbits, and perhaps all bouncing mammals hop. Using an unusual type of rabbit, called a sauteur d'Alfort, which doesn't hop, but run...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/genetics-behind-why-rabbits-hop

Spinosaurus was a dinosaur that was around 13 metres long, and looked a little like a T-Rex with the addition of a massive sail on its back. There's been much debate around how it lived; while it...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/spinosaurus-was-it-giant-toothy-heron

We share our planet with microbes. Some do us harm, others do us good and are known as our microbiome. Plants also have a microbiome, and in a paper out recently, scientists working in a seed ban...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/world-fungi-inside-seed-banks

In 1994, at DeGray Lake in the state of Arkansas in the USA, 29 bald eagles were found dead from a mysterious disease. Many more across the area have been found suffering from "Avian Vacuolar Mye...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/eagle-killer-identified

Crohn's Disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease (or IBD), where the immune system attacks and inflames bits of the intestines. It can cause diarrhea, pain, fatigue, and consequent disrupt...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/industrial-yeast-impairs-gut-wound-healing

Fires of any scale tend to produce a certain amount of smoke - a variety of different particles including small bits of unburnt fuel, which eventually disperse into the atmosphere. And looking at...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/wildfire-smoke-detected-stratosphere

Cone snails are a group of highly venomous marine snails. Their shells are beautiful, but they pack a powerful neurotoxic punch: some members of this family are so poisonous that they can easily ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cone-snails-seduce-prey-pheromones

In recent years we've realised quite how bad a knock on the head can be for us, because the brain bobs about suspended in fluid inside our skulls. And if you move, or stop, the head suddenly, the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/modelling-concussion-eggs

In the UK, about 1 in 4 adults are affected by obesity, which is linked to diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. But recently a new study has documented the effect of giving a drug called sem...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/diabetes-drug-trialled-treat-obesity

A new way to repair diseased livers has been unveiled by researchers at the University of Cambridge. They've found a way to grow the cells that line the branching system of pathways inside the li...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bile-ducts-grown-lab-can-repair-livers

One thing we're all hoping for is that the new coronavirus vaccines will give us 'herd immunity' - this would mean that so many people are immune to the virus that it would start to die away as i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-seeking-herd-immunity-vaccination

Virologist Dr Chris Smith catches up with RNZ's Kim Hill with an update on the Covid-19 latest news including encouraging data on the performance of the vaccines, but discouraging news on the sta...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-latest-and-flu-surge-waiting

Osteoarthritis is a painful condition caused by wear and tear to the slippery cartilage that normally coats and lubricates the bone surfaces in our joints. This doesn't repair itself very well, s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/treating-osteoarthritis-antidepressants

About 70% of our planet is covered in water, and the vast majority of that water is in the salty oceans. But in a paper published recently, scientists from Germany propose that the Arctic Ocean w...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ancient-freshwater-arctic-ocean

Many of us may love driving, but nature certainly doesn't love us doing it! Alongside the pollution, there's the noise of traffic, which isn't just a nuisance for humans. Lots of research shows m...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/traffic-noise-makes-crickets-pick-bad-mates

In the online world, a battle is brewing between tech giants Google and Facebook and the Australian government. The government are proposing a law to force organisations like Google pay the news ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/australia-takes-google

The things we see inhabiting our planet have evolved fantastic adaptations and habits to overcome issues in their environment that get in the way of an ultimate happy ending. This week an interna...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/millipedes-disrupting-trains

Erosion is carrying away millions of tonnes of the soil we depend upon to keep our crops alive, every year. To try to prevent soil losses, farmers have moved away from some traditional techniques...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/growing-roots-compacted-soil

Anyone who's had surgery knows that recovery is often accompanied by discomfort. But scientists in Germany, writing in the British Medical Journal recently, explain how playing music and soothing...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/soothing-surgical-patients

Amid accusations of "despicable behaviour", the EU are backpedalling furiously. With fewer than 2% of EU citizens vaccinated compared with 12% of the UK population, Brussels faces a rising tide o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-vaccines-eu-debacle

You've probably heard of catnip, which makes cats go crazy. There's also another plant called silver vine, which has a similar effect. Now scientists have been nailing down what in silver vine ma...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cats-catnip-and-curious-chemicals

Although knitting and other handicrafts are having a bit of a moment during the pandemic as we all try to keep ourselves busy at home, the art and practice of knitting goes back a long way throug...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/knitting-short-history

Now in the UK it is dark and dreary, but there's been a recent colourful scientific discovery to brighten up the day, as a new flamboyantly-dressed dinosaur has recently been described by scienti...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/flashy-dinosaur-fossil-described

Kim Hill talks to virologist Chris Smith about Covid-19 in 2020, in retrospect and right now. What's the situation with global access to vaccines for the new coronavirus, and will the "new varian...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-can-new-variant-defeat-vaccines

Do you have any winter holiday traditions? This month, as we were gearing up for our holidays here at the Naked Scientists, we thought it would be a fun experiment to explore the science behind h...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/winter-traditions-scientifically-speaking

The WHO estimates that up to 650,000 people globally die each year from the flu, and one of the tools in our arsenal against it is the seasonal flu vaccine. Recently there's been a huge breakthro...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/universal-flu-vaccine

Traditionally, when someone says "vaccine", the image of a syringe and needle usually springs to mind. But injections need trained staff to administer them, and they're unpleasant, even for peopl...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/inhaled-vaccines-cross-lungs-blood

When we nod off we often dream, but many people have reported that, over the course of the pandemic, what they dream about has changed dramatically. It seems to be a real claim, and scientists ar...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dreaming-during-coronavirus-pandemic

The AstraZeneca Oxford University Covid-19 vaccine results were announced recently, but something wasn't quite right: it turned out that some people in the trial had received the wrong vaccine do...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/astrazenecas-covid-vaccine

Recently news was published of an artificial intelligence system which has analysed bits of speech from participants of a long-running study on dementia. These participants were cognitively norma...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/alzheimers-early-detection-ai

Let's dive into the depths and consider the octopus. As well as being famous for its 8 arms, and 3 hearts, octopus vision is also impressive: it helps them spy out dinner, among other things. But...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/octopuses-taste-their-tentacles

As part of their obesity strategy the UK government announced plans to restrict the advertising of unhealthy foods on TV. And in a paper out recently, Oliver Mytton, of Cambridge University, and ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/obesity-modelling-effects-tv-ads

Join Chris Berrow for this extended chat with Carlos "Ocelote" Rodriguez about running one of the biggest eSports teams in the world - G2. From League of Legends to Hearthstone, the team have had...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/carlos-rodriguez-founder-esports-team-g2

When we think of drug discovery we might conjure up images of scientists in white lab coats holding test tubes, but a new study searching for drugs to kill dangerous disease-causing fungi had res...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/drug-discovery-sea-squirt

If you've ever wondered what's going on in your brain when choosing what you want for lunch, look no further. Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis recently publis...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/brain-cells-making-choices-pizza-or-pasta

Tired of just seeing and reading about history? Soon you'll be able to experience its smells as well! This is thanks to an ambitious project called ODEUROPA, which has just received a big EU gran...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smelling-history-ai-chemistry

Pfizer and BioNTech have concluded the Phase 3 trial of their coronavirus vaccine. The results appear to show an efficacy rate of 95%, and the developers hope to win FDA approval as soon as possi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pfizer-vaccine-immunologist-explains

Could an injection of your own brain cells be a way to halt multiple sclerosis - MS? That's what researchers in the US are finding in mice with the disease. In MS, the immune system attacks the b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ms-vaccine-using-your-own-brain-cells

What do we know about Pfizer and bioNTech's new RNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, preliminary results for which were announced this week? Who was tested in the trial? And what is a genetic vaccine, why...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pfizer-announce-covid-19-vaccine

There's been a lot of discussion about the Swedish approach to the coronavirus pandemic, and back in September, Jonas F Ludvigsson, a paediatrician and clinical epidemiologist at the Karolinka In...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-swedish-strategy

This month we hear about an artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough for infertility, how ketamine can mimic some of the decision-making difficulties seen in schizophrenia, a new device to obser...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/ai-infertility-and-scar-free-healing

Have you ever heard of the condition known as "heart failure with preserved ejection fraction"? If not, then you're not alone; despite it representing hundreds of thousands of heart failure cases...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hfpef-heart-failure-type-underserved

Virologist Dr Chris Smith joins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill to talk Covid-19. Why is the UK back in a lockdown, and did the measure come too late? How are we testing for the virus and h...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/uk-back-lockdown

There's been lots of talk over the last several months over how best to both protect people from coronavirus and protect the economy, and economist Quentin Grafton from Australian National Univer...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-control-and-economy

Would you like to make more money? Understand your relationships better? Know when to trust someone, or something, or not? Well, David Sumpter's got an equation for you in his new book 'Ten equat...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ten-equations-rule-world

Were you waking up too early this week? Across Europe, we recently left summer Daylight Light Saving time and re-entered standard time. But where does this practice of changing the clocks come fr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/daylight-saving-time-history

Plastics are useful but notoriously hard to recycle back into their component chemicals, which limits what else we can do with them. Now, scientists in the US have developed a new catalyst that c...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/plastic-recycling-one-pot-method

We've heard news that Morrisons, Waitrose and John Lewis' own brand Christmas products will not contain glitter this year. And now, scientists at Anglia Ruskin University have looked at making li...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/glitter-litter-dark-side-dazzle

If you've been paying attention to the news in recent times, you'll be very familiar by now with graphs: COVID rates, infection rates, data are being displayed in a plethora of ways. But there ar...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-not-get-fooled-graphs

Britain recently began a diplomatic campaign to draw up new rules for responsible behaviour in space; essentially it's a "don't litter" policy intended to reduce the threat posed by decades of ir...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/stop-littering-space

On the 28th September, Boris Johnson committed to increasing the area of protected land in the UK to 30% by 2030. This announcement was made at a virtual UN event, where the prime minister, along...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/protected-land-uk-facing-biodiversity-crisis

How do bees recognise who's a bona fide member of the nest and who is an impostor? It turns out that it's down to the bacteria they carry inside them... Eva Higginbotham heard how Cassondra Verni...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bee-microbiome-smells-tell-nestmates-apart

For decades, astronomers have been scouring the skies looking for signs and signals that appear to be from creatures on other planets. But discussions on this topic invariably stray into science ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/alien-life-zoologists-guide

Covid-19 is forcing educators to re-think centuries of teaching traditions and develop new ways to provide a rich but safe student experience. Jim Gazzard leads Cambridge University's Institute o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/jim-gazzard-adapting-teaching-covid-19

Listen in to a special interview all about the Naked Gaming Podcast.Gene "Bean" Baxter from Podcast Radio (and Radio Hall of Famer!) chats to Leigh Milner and Chris Berrow about what its like bei...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-gaming/naked-gamings-chris-leigh-interviewed

As UK cases spike again, Dr Chris Smith joins RNZ's Kim Hill to discuss why some geographies are particularly hard-hit, what constitutes a "super-spreader" and who are the asymptomatic cases, wha...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/uk-covid-19-second-wave

This month on the eLife podcast, artificial intelligence reveals a better test for prostate cancer, is the brain stuffed with neuronal stem cells, bonobos with cultural preferences, and why some ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/prostate-cancer-prediction-and-bonobo-culture

On October 8th, about 15,000 students will return for the new academic year at Cambridge University. Other UK institutions have seen outbreaks and quarantine measures en-masse as Covid has ripped...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cambridge-and-covid-new-academic-year

Welcome to the end of the universe. Which one will we get? Will the life drain slowly from thousands of cold, dead galaxies; or will the stars get ripped apart by a wave of strange new matter? Th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/many-ends-universe

Everyone loves magic. But does that extend to animals? You might have seen videos online of people performing tricks to animals, and the animals being hugely entertained by it, but do they unders...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/magical-manipulation-animals

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 is a debilitating genetic disease that causes muscle weakness and wasting, amongst other problems, and there's currently no cure. It causes a toxic form of the chemical ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gene-editing-reverse-myotonic-dystrophy

People everywhere are clinging to the hope that there'll soon be a coronavirus vaccine. That aspiration suffered a setback last week when AstraZeneca announced the suspension of its trial of the ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/when-will-we-get-covid-19-vaccine

Virologist Dr Chris Smith joins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill for a Covid-19 update covering why AstraZeneca and Oxford University's coronavirus vaccine trial was halted and how vaccine s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bradykinin-and-covid-19-whats-link

From the Babylonians to psychologist Sigmund Freud, as humans we've been fascinated by what our dreams might mean for thousands of years. Now, computer scientists have turned their hands to the a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dream-analysis-ai

There have been some record breaking temperatures lately, and Adam Murphy is hot on the trail of why one place in particular stands out... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Nake...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-death-valley-so-hot

Drink driving is one of the biggest killers on our roads. Brian Suffoletto is an A&E doctor in the US where he's spent the past 15 years developing digital interventions to stop people drinking a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smartphones-can-tell-if-youre-drunk

PTSD is a disease that may occur after experiencing trauma, often characterised by the involuntary reliving of particularly painful memories. About 1 in 3 people who experience trauma will develo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/genetic-risk-ptsd

Dr Chris Smith joins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill to talk about the latest news and breakthroughs around the Covid-19 coronavirus. How the virus spreads, the prospect of long-term immuni...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-update-spread-tests-and-vaccines

Getting cold won't just make your hair stand up, it may also make it grow. Yulia Shwartz at Harvard University and her colleagues have found that the nerves that give us goose pimples also send a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/goosebumps-cause-hair-growth

Giant pandas, which for decades were endangered, finally shed the status in 2016 thanks to huge conservation efforts. But scientists have been warning that their reserves aren't well designed for...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/big-carnivores-disappear-panda-reserves

New research means we're going to have to think again about how human sperm swim. You might have seen movies of them looking a bit like tadpoles in a pond - the head carries the male's DNA and th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sperm-movement-swim-n-roll

The world took a step towards our goal of harnessing nuclear fusion as an energy source last week when the construction officially began of ITER, the new International Thermonuclear Experimental ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/iter-build-begins

In early August, the UK stepped back from some of the proposed lockdown easing measures. So how are public health officials managing these situations, are we in good shape to cope with the approa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-outbreaks-local-lockdowns

The millions of rods and cones in the retina at the back of each of your eyes, which turn light into nerve signals to send to the brain, use a lot of energy. So the retina tends to burn out faste...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/red-light-restores-vision-aged-eyes

The liver is an incredible organ that does a number of different jobs - including cleaning our blood and breaking down chemicals and drugs - to keep us healthy. And liver problems can have seriou...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/artificial-liver-progress

Colourful still life paintings of bowls of fruit have been a favourite of artists for generations, and there are thousands of examples in art galleries across the world. Now, two friends from Bel...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/painted-fruit-and-veg-reveal-plant-origins

After 22 years of searching, researchers at the Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands have successfully identified the genetic cause behind a certain type of inherited adult hearin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/deafness-gene-identified

Kim Hill catches up with virologist Chris Smith to review the Covid-19 current state of play, from Leicester's lockdown, the WHO stance on masks and aerosol spread, to long-term immunity and long...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-are-we-facing-second-wave

How has the pandemic affected the global food supply? That's the subject of a recent report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. Their message is that while there have been a few indust...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-causing-global-food-crisis

Cobalt is one of the 118 chemical elements, and it's a vital ingredient in making batteries for everything from your mobile phone to electric cars. Land mining for cobalt and other metals can be ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mining-metals-deep-sea

Do you consider yourself something of a Dr Doolittle? According to new research from the University of Amsterdam, we're all actually pretty good at understanding what animals are trying to expres...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/chatty-chimps-we-hear-you

This month on the eLife Podcast we look at how sugar takes away the pleasure of consuming and makes you eat more, we find out what loneliness does to the brain, uncover new insights into how HIV ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/sugar-brain-hiv-and-science-sex-bias

Astronomers have taken what might be the first ever picture of a baby planet being formed. It looks like a beautiful tornado-shaped spiral of light, and there's a tiny twist visible inside one of...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/baby-planet-image-shows-signs-formation

You might think that when you're choosing a partner to have children with that your decision is entirely yours. However it turns out that biology has an interesting trick up its sleeve, which may...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/do-eggs-prefer-one-sperm-over-another

Everyday in the UK over 40 people die from liver disease, some of whom could be saved by having a liver transplant - but there aren't enough donor livers to go around. But what if we could grow l...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mini-human-livers-transplanted-rats

Where are we now, six months into the COVID-19 pandemic? The official global death toll is over 380,000 with well over 6 million confirmed cases according to the World Health Organisation. Are we...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-six-months-are-we-managing-it

A few weeks ago some stork babies made the news as the first white stork chicks to hatch in the UK for over 600 years. Despite the very long gap, here in the UK a legacy of these large, white, mi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/storks-cultural-history

Phase 2 of the hydroxychloroquine debacle, how the race to publish is leading to rapid retractions, whether Sweden's having second thoughts, did Covid come out of a lab, innate immunity and antib...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-conspiracies-chloroquine-and-immunity

Donald Trump got a lot of stick when he talked about using disinfectant and light to kill off COVID-19 - seemingly implying people should drink bleach or shine a torch down their throats. Now a t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/far-uvc-light-kill-coronavirus

In this week's coronavirus update, the impact of blood groups on Covid risk, progress towards a vaccine, and the UK still has 8000 cases a day: what does this mean for herd immunity? Also, is Swe...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/8000-coronavirus-cases-day-uk

A herd of fluffy wild Kashmiri goats made the news back in March at the onset of the lockdown when they descended on the Welsh town of Llandudno to explore where all the people had got to. Now, a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/goats-get-point

The UK government has come under fire for failing to protect care homes from the spread of the coronavirus. The facilities have seen more than 14,000 coronavirus-related deaths so far - that's ov...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/care-homes-how-badly-has-covid-19-hit

Progress in vaccine trials, the longevity of immune responses to Covid-19 and coronavirus vaccines, animal models of Covid-19, genetic stability of SARS-CoV-2, is hydroxychloroquine a good gamble...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/vaccines-antibodies-and-covid19-sweden

A special Covid-19 news update: Have you had a test for COVID-19? Some results from the symptom tracker app. Also, how blood plasma from Covid-recoverees is being used to treat patients acutely i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-news-update

Will SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19, continue to circulate for years to come? What's the story with infection in children, and how is Kawasaki Disease involved? Are separate strains of the vir...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-here-stay

If, before a date, you like to spritz yourself to smell great for that special someone, you could be in good company, as this week, scientists in Japan have published a paper looking at ring-tail...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/are-ring-tailed-lemurs-sniffing-out-date

Sometimes scientists try to study one thing and end up accidentally discovering something else. Cancer researcher Cathy Wilson from the University of Cambridge recently experienced such good fort...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cancer-gene-vital-heart-regeneration

Scientists discover why Covid-19 causes some people to lose their sense of smell and taste, that patients probably don't catch coronavirus for a second time soon after their first encounter, why ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/catching-coronavirus-twice-fact-or-fiction

Across the world, universities have been closed, researchers sent home and many classes are either not taking place or they've shifted online; so how does that impact the way universities are ope...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cambridge-university-and-covid-stephen-toope

Researchers have discovered a link between certain chemicals found in plastics and the premature births. The chemicals are from a class called phthalates, and they're used in a wide variety of ho...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/phthalate-linked-premature-births

We're all spending more time at home right now, and being cooped up indoors can feel rather challenging. And with spring very much sprung here in the UK, what better time than to get those finger...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/grow-your-own-veg-novices-guide

As human trials of Covid-19 vaccines kick off in the UK, what kind of protection might we expect, and when will we know. Also, the thorny issue of facemasks - do they help contain the contagion, ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-vaccines-and-facemasks

Recorded back in early March for our Cambridge Science Festival event, before the current lockdown measures were put in place, Cambridge University physicist and science stand up comedian Fran Ch...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-stand-supernovae-and-forks

Will a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus be forthcoming, and what other measures are effective at fighting Covid-19? We're setting great store by social distancing, but is 2 metres going...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/social-distancing-2-metres-enough

This week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's close-call with Covid-19, reversing the lockdown, how contact tracing can control outbreaks, changing public practices around face masks, and can the exh...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-can-you-catch-it-again

The risk of bringing home coronavirus on your groceries is very low, but what's the best way to minimise the threat? Chris Smith explains... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Na...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-i-catch-coronavirus-my-shopping

As our high streets are becoming increasingly deserted by humans, it's becoming apparent that we aren't the only creatures roaming our cities. Birds are still chirping away out there. A city is n...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smart-birds-flourish-cities

As the lockdown tightens and a quarter of the world's population are forced to stay at home, Chris Smith and RNZ's Kim Hill link up to talk about the latest coronavirus facts. They explore whethe...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/coronavirus-do-facemasks-help-or-hinder

Space-grown lettuce may sound like something from science-fiction, but astronauts on the International Space Station, or ISS, have been enjoying their leafy greens since mid 2015, thanks to NASA'...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/space-lettuce-good-you

As the UK goes into lock-down and the government announces unprecedented spending to support businesses and workers, Chris Smith rejoins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill to discuss the scien...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-will-lock-down-work

Last year scientists from the University of Exeter discovered that staring at seagulls can discourage them from stealing your food. Not content with saving the chips of many a seaside tourist, th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/seagulls-prefer-food-touched-humans

Every household across the world produces wastewater. While usually we think of it as waste that has to be treated, a new study by the UN Institute for Water, in the National Resources Forum, con...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/worlds-wasted-wastewater-potential

As the focus shifts to Europe, now regarded as the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, Chris Smith rejoins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill to debate whether the UK stance, currently at o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-uks-reaction-right-one

This month, new hearing tests to spot those likely to struggle with speech in noisy environments, how your DNA is at risk from hacking on a public database, plants with three parents, researchers...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/plants-three-parents

Chris Smith rejoined Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill on Saturday 29th February as New Zealand declares its first case of Covid-19. So far the novel coronavirus has infected more than 80,000...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/covid-19-whats-happening

Cannabis has all sorts of effects on the body, including - it seems - on memory. A new study has shown that questioning people who are acutely high on cannabis makes them more vulnerable to formi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cannabis-and-false-memories

Zoos are big players in conservation, investing 750 million dollars in conserving species in the wild. Researchers from Trinity College Dublin discovered, maybe unsurprisingly, that zoos with mor...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/improving-zoos

Listener Paul got in touch wondering, given that diamonds are made of carbon, how big a diamond you could make if you turned all the carbon atoms in a lump of coal into a sparkler. Would it make ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pop-question-lump-coal

Ancient wasp nests have enabled scientists to, for the first time, accurately pinpoint the ages of rock paintings dating back thousands of years in a remote part of Australia. And the picture tha...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/wasp-nests-help-date-ancient-aboriginal-art

Chris Smith joined Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill on Saturday 1st February in the wake of the World Health Organisation's decision to declare the Chinese coronavirus outbreak a global heal...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/coronavirus-outbreak-where-do-we-stand

Chris Smith appeared on Radio New Zealand National to speak with Kim Hill 0n 25th January 2020 to discuss the emerging coronavirus situation in Wuhan City, China. Here they discuss the origins of...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/coronavirus-what-happening

Have these paralysed patients helped to reveal the brain basis of why we gesticulate when we talk? Also, new insights into how the body clock keeps track of the seasons, signs that immunity to Zi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/zika-immunity-and-falling-body-temperatures

The Daily Mile is a programme for primary school children, that gets them to spend 15 minutes jogging or running at their own pace during the school day. The programme's name comes from the fact ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/should-kids-run-mile-day

Researchers at McMaster University in Canada have developed a new cling-film-like wrap that can be used to coat objects to make them bacteria-, water- and dust-repellent. Inventor Tohid Didar exp...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/self-cleaning-surfaces

An update on the emerging viral infection from Wuhan City, in China: the disease was first picked up by the Chinese in early December and notified to the World Health Organisation at the start of...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/wuhan-city-coronavirus-update

Around the world, millions of people are infected with the AIDS virus, HIV. And although drug treatments can successfully suppress the virus to undetectable levels, rather like taking your foot o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/towards-hiv-cure

Naked Gaming Podcast presenters Chris Berrow and Leigh Milner catch up with voice of "The Witcher" video game series, Doug Cockle to find out what he thinks of the latest Netflix TV show... Like ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/doug-cockle-voice-witcher

Motor neuron disease, in its many different forms, affects about one in every 2,500 people in the UK - it's incurable, and can be debilitating, as over time you lose control of parts of your body...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/motor-neuron-disease-link-cholesterol

One other lifestyle change people tend to embrace at this time of year is to quit smoking. And the good news is that, according to a study from University College London, you're in very good comp...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smokers-less-dependent-less-likely-quit

Scientists have found a way to make organisms not need food at all. Bacteria usually rely on some sort of sugar to survive, but a group at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel made a popul...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/co2-consuming-bacteria

And now onto something out of this World. For the first time, scientists have found evidence of a giant, Neptune-size planet orbiting a white dwarf star. This was previously not thought to be pos...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/large-planet-orbiting-white-dwarf

Join the Naked Gaming Podcast team for a special bonus episode, with an in-depth interview with the voice of Ash Ketchum from the pokemon TV series. What was it like getting the job, where did th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/voice-ash-pokemon

Taking a leaf from the holly and the ivy's book, Katie Haylor explores the virtue of being evergreen...? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/holly-and-ivy-why-go-evergreen

How did the popular concept of Christmas trees get started? Extolling the virtues of a real tree, including a superior short-term carbon footprint and a nicer smell, Adam Murphy explains how the ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-are-christmas-trees-thing

The lung disease tuberculosis is still one of the world's top ten causes of death. And while it's completely treatable, patients need constant monitoring to make sure the treatment is working. Th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ai-detect-tuberculosis

Measles was thought to have been eradicated from the UK in 2017, but following an outbreak the very next wear, we lost this elimination status. Measles is a highly infectious disease that can qui...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-measles-suppresses-immunity-years

Mental health awareness has been improving in the past few years, but there still isn't universal, accessible support for vulnerable people. A recent study carried out by members of the Universit...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/deprivation-and-male-depression

In 2001 Lawrence Jones set out on a freeskiing trip with his mates. It was not the first adventure trip they had been on, but it was the last one that any of them took lightly again. An avalanche...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/avalanche-survivor-lawrences-story

The UN Climate Change Conference - COP 25 - has been taking place in Madrid. The purpose of the conference is to take the next crucial steps in implementing the global carbon-cutting proposals ag...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/climate-change-what-does-net-zero-look

This is a response to a story we covered earlier this year about planting trees for climate change. A study in the journal Science claimed that the Earth has space for an extra billion hectares o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-planting-trees-isnt-always-good-idea

While forests do a great job of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, as soon as the trees decompose, all that carbon goes straight back up again. And a new study has investigated how that...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/lakes-carbon-and-microbes-hidden-world

If you have access to a healthy, balanced diet, hopefully you'll be getting adequate supply of micronutrients. Going without can lead to serious health consequences. Vitamin A deficiency is the l...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/food-micronutrient-protecting-capsules

A vaccine that can protect against infection with the skin bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, which causes everything from wound and joint infections to impetigo and pneumonia, has been developed b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/staphylococcus-aureus-biofilm-vaccine

You might think we are special as humans for forming societies with complex structures. But we are not actually so different from other species in this regard. It was believed that complex social...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bird-societies

In recent months the satellite Voyager 2, launched in 1977, became the second man-made object to escape from our Solar System and begin its journey into interstellar space. We know it's done that...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/voyager-2-leaving-solar-system

Oil production has multiple environmentally-devastating consequences - including creating of billions of gallons of salty, chemical-filled wastewater. Typically, companies dispose of this wastewa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/oil-wastewater-makes-earthquakes-stronger

We have smartphones, smart watches, even smart fridges. But now, from a paper published in the journal Photonics Research, we could be seeing smart glass. Researchers from the University of Wisco...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/glass-recognises-numbers-just-looking

This month, join Chris Smith to hear how sleep deprivation sends your endocannabinoids skyrocketing and triggers a tendency to binge, how many new genetic mutations you inherit from your parents,...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/how-many-new-mutations-mum-and-dad

One in five UK children are obese. The biological and social factors behind this are complex, but the long term consequences range from cardiovascular and liver disease to diabetes. Now, accordin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/brain-changes-obese-children

Considering people's wellbeing in making policy decisions is becoming more and more important, but it's only in recent years that governments have started to record the subjective satisfaction of...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/old-books-reveal-how-happy-we-once-were

Immunotherapy is the term used to describe techniques that provoke the immune system to attack and remove cancer. The argument goes that because the immune system is extremely specific in what it...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gene-boost-makes-cancer-more-visible

You're probably familiar with the 1966 science fiction film "Fantastic Voyage", where a submarine crew are shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/robots-blood-vessels

What if the next refrigeration technology could be based on twisting and untwisting strands? A new paper published in Science by an international team of researchers explored how twisting and str...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cooling-comes-twist

Can we help people who've lost a leg to feel it again? Mariana Marasoiu has this report... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/prostheses-can-restore-lost-sensation

This month, doctors doing U-turns: the medical practices without much evidence to prop them up, wind-tunnel experiments reveal how geese fly at extreme altitudes, why mating makes bees go blind, ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/elife-podcast/astronauts-geese-and-realistic-retinas

Mobile phone companies could be set to erect bigger and taller phone masts as part of government plans to roll out 5G networks and improve coverage in rural areas. How might taller masts help wit...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/are-phone-masts-going-get-larger

Bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to many of the agents we use to deal with them, including antiseptics. The bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii is one example and causes hard to treat s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/antimicrobial-resistance-and-future-plastics

A research team from Virginia Tech, led by Ryan Pollyea, has found that earthquakes 8 kilometres below the earth's surface are increasing in intensity. Published in the journal Nature Communicati...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/stronger-earthquakes-oilfield-wastewater

A heatwave has been sweeping across Europe recently, causing record temperatures across the continent and creating a lot of consternation in the Naked Scientist office. But where do heatwaves com...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-behind-heatwaves

Your genome contains all of your genetic information, and it's pretty long - the Human Genome Project estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. But according to synthetic biolog...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/decoding-minimum-genome

The world's largest patch of seaweed appears every summer in the mid-Atlantic. And since 2011, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt has been growing to even more monstrous sizes - thousands of kilom...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/worlds-biggest-patch-seaweed

The nervous system is a complicated network of specialised cells - neurons - that transfer information from one part of the body to another. To help our understanding of the nervous system in hum...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/nervous-system-worms

You might remember from a year or so ago stories of an alien fly-by. The unidentified object was famously referred to as Oumuamua, which means "scout" in Hawaiian. Now a paper just out in the jou...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/oumuamua-alien-technology-no-mua-more

In June, Izzie Clarke explored the extremely fast science of speed and headed to the race tracks with McLaren in their 600LT Spider supercar. But whilst Formula 1 and petrol racing have a huge fa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/extremely-fast-future-electric-racing

With a rising global population, and the impending impacts of climate change, we need more food, and reliable food sources safeguarded for the future. But varying light levels mean that plant gro...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/making-crops-more-light-sensitive

In March 2016 the public voted to name a new polar research vessel "Boaty McBoatface", ultimately though, it was decided that "RRS Sir David Attenborough" was a more fitting choice. But the name ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/boaty-mcboatface-and-antarctic-mystery

Robots are increasingly used to take over repetitive tasks in industry and agriculture, but they are still limited in what they can do. This also means that humans still need to work alongside th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smarter-safer-robots

The world is facing a global fish issue - a fissue, if you will. One third of all fish stocks are being overfished, and most of the efforts to prevent this involve exclusive zones in the ocean ma...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/fish-small-world-after-all

The chest disease asthma is becoming more common. It can lead to life-threatening breathing difficulties when the airways constrict and the lung tissue overproduces mucus; this is usually an alle...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/asthma-mapping-human-lung

When it comes to understanding how the brain functions, scientists have done a great deal of work on studying macaque monkeys, our evolutionary relative. We share 93% of our DNA and in a lot of w...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pitch-perception-special-skill

Large holes in Antarctic sea ice remain a mystery to scientists despite their discovery over four decades ago. These vast areas of unfrozen water, often referred to as polynyas which is a russian...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cracking-secret-antarctic-ice-holes

At the end of 2018 Walkers launched their own recycling scheme for crisp packets after more than 300,000 people signed an online petition demanding that they change to a fully recyclable material...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/recyclable-crisp-packets-using-nanotechnology

CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Long name, but easy to picture: the sequence is synonymous to a word processor for a book, the book being DNA, which a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/higher-fatal-flu-risk-crispr-twins

Around 1.4 million people alive in the UK today have survived a heart attack, but survivors can suffer from debilitating heart failure, because the heart is damaged during the attack. Ten years a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-mend-broken-heart

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria evolve to sidestep the drugs we use to kill them. With resistance rising, we could be facing an "antibiotic apocalypse", where even trivial infections b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/antibiotic-made-metal

To better understand how personal exposure to air pollution can impact an individual's health, Katie Haylor met up with Cambridge University chemist Lia Chatzidiakou for a walk around c...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sensing-air-pollution

Researchers have gained new insights into how bacteria move in complex environments. Bacteria move using a system called "swim-and-tumble": they swim in a straight line for a bit, then tumble in ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bacteria-not-slowed-obstacles

Geologists from the University of California, Berkeley, found something unexpected in sand samples from Japan. Rather than natural particles, from rocks or plants, these tiny blobs of glass seem ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hiroshima-buildings-found-beach-sand

Harassment in online communities is not a new phenomenon, but it is a growing one, with 40-46% of people reportedly having experienced it. Communities like reddit, one of the world's largest disc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/reducing-harassment-online

Everyone's heard of T-Rexes, the twenty-foot-tall monsters that roamed the Earth back in the Late Cretaceous Period. But you may not have heard of their miniature cousin. It's a six foot tall din...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mystery-miniature-t-rex

Caster Semenya, a South African athlete with unusually high testosterone for a woman, has lost her appeal against new regulations from the International Association of Athletics Federations. The ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/caster-semenya-and-testosterone-limits

Our society uses - and then throws away - a vast amount of plastic, which then accumulates in the environment. To combat this, in recent years, new types of plastic bags have become available, la...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/biodegradable-bags-might-not-biodegrade

Before Britain was a nation of shopkeepers we were a nation of farmers; before that, the population were a bunch of hunter gatherers. But farming didn't catch on here until 1000 years after it ha...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dna-unveils-origins-farming-britain

Human babies grow inside their mothers for 40 weeks enclosed in a watery bag that expands as they do. And as the clock ticks during pregnancy, various processes kick in to thin the membrane mater...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/premature-labour-why-babies-arrive-early

Batteries are in almost everything we use. Our phones, computers, energy storage, even in transport. Typically, to see how well a battery performs, scientists have to charge and discharge them ov...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ai-predicting-battery-performance

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) has recently issued a series of so-called "energy transition pathways". These are essentially routes that we as a society need to follow, i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/renewable-energy-beats-carbon-capture

The multinational team behind the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which spans the Earth by linking dishes in 8 different countries, have revealed the first images of the supermassive black hole - ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/eht-sheds-light-m87-black-hole

Astronomers have used a new camera called the HiPERCAM to analyse a type of small, dim star that has proved elusive to standard cameras. The camera has allowed them to make detailed measurements ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-look-old-star

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is widely regarded as one of humanity's greatest scientific achievements. The 17 km long accelerator smashes particles together at high speeds, and looks at the pr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/exotic-particle-discovery-lhc

Catalytic converters are in car exhausts and convert toxic carbon monoxide into much less harmful carbon dioxide, as well as removing other pollutants. On a petrol car, they are the metal box you...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/low-temperature-catalysts-reduce-emissions

Ever wondered how to get the best wifi reception in your house, given all those floors and walls which can interrupt the signal? Where to position the router and signal boosters, then where peopl...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/metamaterials-solve-equations

Having an injection is an experience common to us all, and whether you are unfussed by them or they make you feel faint, the actual needle used is the same for everyone and highly standardised. B...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/precision-injecting-smart-needle

US scientists have engineered into yeast the genes needed to make the key chemicals in cannabis. To find out why and what's involved, Chris Smith looked at the paper with York University's Ian Gr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/creating-cannabis-chemicals-yeast

The agriculture sector is responsible for about 25% of global warming according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so rearing livestock for meat is a significant problem. When rumi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/climate-impact-lab-grown-meat

Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, from what should be preventable diseases. Up to date, scientists have been trying to figure out th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-bacteria-physically-resist-antibiotics

Scientists have discovered that some grass species have information in their genes that's not come from their parents, and instead think they're stealing genetic information from neighbouring pla...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/grasses-are-genetic-thieves

About a quarter of a billion people around the world are affected by asthma, when the lungs' airways constrict, making breathing difficult. For decades we've treated the condition with drugs that...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/treating-asthma-differently

Archaeologists working in the UK and in Germany have come across rare examples of what look like ancient wooden spears that would have been used by our ancestors 400,000 years ago. But scientists...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ancient-javelins

Scientists have found a spot in the brain that, when stimulated, triggers laughter and is followed by a sense of calm and happiness that lasts 30 minutes.This discovery has direct implication for...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/brain-centre-laughter

Scientists have given a dieting drug made for humans to mosquitoes in order to curb their appetite. Researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York have worked through hundreds of thousands...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dieting-mosquitoes-prevent-disease

If you are a night owl, getting up in the morning is something that you absolutely dread. On the other hand, morning people jump out of bed ready and chatty. Is this something hardwired? The answ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hundreds-genes-control-body-clock

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy is a genetic disease which causes the muscle of the heart to thicken. Left untreated, it can lead to heart failure, and it's quite common. But the therapies we have av...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/managing-cardiomyopathy

A new way to capture CO2 from factories or the atmosphere has been developed by researchers in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, located in the United States of America. The new technology uses ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/improving-carbon-capture

There is a mountain located in the middle of a giant crater on Mars, but how it formed is still a bit of a puzzle for scientists. Investigations of the rocks below the surface of the crater have ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/martian-rock-discovery-surprises-scientists

Lack of sleep or poor sleep is a problem that affects 1 in 3 people in the UK and America. Insufficient sleep is not only a health issue, contributing to heart disease, diabetes and obesity, but ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/rocking-adults-sleep

Nearly every cell in the body contains a part called the nucleus which houses the genetic information needed to function. Muscle cells are the largest cells in the body, so they often need multip...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/muscles-really-do-have-memory

It's common knowledge that smoking cigarettes is addictive, and this is because of the nicotine they contain. E-cigarettes are devices that heat up a liquid and produce an aerosol or spray which ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/whats-really-your-e-cigarette

Brushing our teeth keeps them clean and free from debris, but back in medieval times, dental hygiene wasn't part of your daily routine. This means that scientists can look at the teeth of skeleto...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/rare-pigment-fossilised-teeth

Every day hundreds of people die when they accidentally overdose on opiate drugs, like heroin or morphine. These agents depress breathing, causing respiratory failure. But, if an opioid antidote ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smartphone-sonar-detects-drug-overdoses

One terrifying prediction is that, by mid-Century, up to 30% of adults will be affected by a form of dementia, chiefly Alzheimer's Disease. This happens when proteins called beta-amyloid, and tau...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sleep-quality-and-alzheimers-disease

Back in 2001, Dr Chris Smith launched a new show, The Naked Scientists, in the hope of making science accessible. It was one of the first radio programmes to be made into a podcast and is now one...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/podcasts-chris-smith-talks-lawrence-jones

Biological systems are able to create complex shapes and patterns, like the stripes of a zebra, the shape of your hand or the dynamic displays of a flock of birds. These shapes develop in an emer...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bio-inspired-robot-swarms

The Ancient Greeks understood that the liver was one of the most incredible organs humans possess when they wrote the cautionary tale of Zeus' punishment of Prometheus, in which poor Prometheus w...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cheers-liver

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers affecting young women, and it's caused by a virus called Human Papilloma Virus, or HPV, which is spread through sexual contact. The virus causes ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-test-cervical-cancer

Christmas is a wonderful time of year, but all of the additional transport and consumption adds up, and we are left with plenty of seasonal rubbish and greenhouse gases. So how can you cut down t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/carbon-neutral-christmas

Clean water is something that we often take for granted, but making it can be a major technological and energy-intensive process. Now, thanks to a system developed by scientists at York Universit...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/harnessing-sunlight-clean-water

How can seemingly similar cells behave differently? This is a particularly important question when a small change means that a cell does not function properly and several diseases might be the re...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/nano-tweezers-extract-contents-cells

Language is all around us, and good language skills are important for getting on in life. But does being good in one language domain, like spelling, mean you'll be good in another, like grammar? ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/language-development-through-childhood

When we think of robots we might think of the Terminator, West World, or even something completely different like Big Hero Six - a story about a young boy and his soft medical robot companion Bay...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cuddly-robots-feel-hugs

Every year, hundreds of millions of people contract malaria; this is a parasitic infection spread by mosquitoes. The parasite does two things when it grows in the body: either it clones itself to...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/modelling-malaria

When we think of our immune system, most of us will be familiar with the white blood cells that circulate around our body to target and kill the bacteria and viruses that make us sick. But, we ac...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cancer-killing-immune-cells

Do you like to lie out on the beach in the summer, or are you more likely to be found hiding in the shade? Well, how you answer might depend on how quickly you seem to get sunburnt. We all know t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/real-fake-tan-fights-cancer

Today marks 100 years since the end of World War 1. This conflict caused the deaths of around 16 million people, and the new developments in artillery meant that new and nasty injuries were defyi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-ww1-can-help-head-injuries

We get so many good questions sent to us here at The Naked Scientists, that sadly we can't fit them all into our monthly question and answer shows. So here's an extra slice of science for you fro...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-artificial-intelligence-make-medicines

Glioblastoma is an aggressive and often deadly cancer of the brain. Understanding it is vital to improving patient outcomes. In a new study published in Nature Genetics, a group in Cornell Univer...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/glioblastomas-effect-genes

Good dental hygiene is crucial in the fight against gum disease, which can lead to a common condition called periodontitis. It comes about when changes to the bacteria in the mouth cause a reacti...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/targeting-immune-cells-treat-periodontitis

Astronomers at the University of Hertfordshire have come up with an explanation for the wobble seen in jets of matter being blasted from regions surrounding some supermassive black holes: Another...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cosmic-collisions-supermassive-black-holes

Nowadays, tuberculosis takes more lives than any other infectious disease. Cases are on the decline but emerging antibiotic resistance threatens to interrupt that pattern. Tamsin Bell spoke with ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/1000-years-tuberculosis

We all know that drinking alcohol is bad for us but in the UK we still pay a huge 3.5 billion annually for the National Health Service (NHS) to treat over 60 alcohol induced medical conditions in...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/english-youths-drinking-less-alcohol

From right here on earth to the furthest visible parts of the universe, NASA has its eye on pretty much everything in between. Professor Andrew Coates from University College London was lead co-i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/nasa-now-and-next

Mosquitoes spread diseases like malaria, and they are rapidly becoming resistant to the insecticides used to control them. So scientists are looking at the potential of using a genetic technique,...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gene-drive-wipe-out-mosquitoes

Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats facing mankind today. A new group in the University of Washington in Seattle, have been working to fight this threat. In a new study, they've ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/using-gallium-antibiotic

Imagine going into space. You've got your kit, you're blasted into darkness, you're ready to discover the unknown but then your equipment doesn't quite fit the task required. How can you prepare ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/robotic-skin-turns-everyday-objects-robots

You may have heard of graphene, the so called wonder material set to revolutionise electronics but the difficulty to consistently add extra properties and scale up cheaply limits industrial use! ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-conductive-and-magnetic-material

Do you share food or do you bite the hand off anyone who tries? Chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives are in the latter category: they'll gladly share tools, but food's a no no. New research ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bonobo-apes-wont-share-toys

We've all been there at some point - you raise your hand in class, answer the question, and get it utterly, utterly wrong. These school-day humiliations may stay with us many years later, in fact...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/back-school-why-mistakes-help-us-learn

These days, many of us are heavily dependent on our trusty sat navs to get where we want to go, but looking at these devices whilst driving is incredibly dangerous and can lead to car accidents. ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/audio-cues-improve-driver-safety

Goats can tell apart human facial expressions and - what's more - prefer to interact with happy people, according to a new study from scientists at Queen Mary University of London. We knew work a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/goats-prefer-happy-people

Most of the people who develop cancer are adults, although a significant number of children succumb too. The signs are though that childhood cancers could have a different origin than the adult d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/origins-childhood-kidney-cancer

From artificial photosynthesis to the art of statistics, the Naked Scientists take Jenny Zhang and Richard Samworth, two of St John's College's leading scientists, for a trip down the river to he...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-st-johns

Doctors think that one third of the world's population have been exposed to the bacterial infection TB, or tuberculosis. It can damage any tissue in the body, infect the skeleton and joints, and ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/testing-tuberculosis

We often hear about the search for life on Mars, but could life begin outside our solar system? Izzie Clarke discussed the chemistry involved with astrophysicist Paul Rimmer... Like this podcast?...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-did-early-life-evolve

Since Darwin's time scientists have been studying the skeleton of a type of fish that lived 400 million years ago called Heterostracans. These fish were covered in a tough exoskeleton, but scient...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/evolution-skeleton

HIV is a global pandemic. Worldwide, about 37 million people are living with the virus, and there are between 3 and 5 thousand AIDS deaths every day. More worrying is that, despite intensive publ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/circumcision-prevents-hiv

Mixing chemicals together causes reactions and produces new molecules. With so many different chemicals in existence, there are infinite combinations that can be made, and millions of chemical re...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/chemputer-chemistry-goes-digital

Vitiligo is an autoimmune condition, in which the immune system attacks the pigment-producing cells of the skin, leaving behind pale white patches. Although not dangerous in itself, vitiligo can ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/blocking-memory-immune-cells-cures-vitiligo

Heart attacks come about when blood vessels in the heart are blocked, and without a supply of oxygen-rich blood, the heart muscle can die. This is called ischemic injury, and can also occur in ot...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/growing-new-blood-vessels

People all around the world are living the high life. That's to say, living their whole lives at high altitude. This lifestyle has an impact on their bodies, including upon how their bones grow. ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-high-life-can-shrink-your-arms

Scientists want to raise awareness to protect the Earth from dangerous asteroids. June 30th has now become Asteroid Day where people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids, ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/should-we-be-worried-about-asteroids

4 billion years ago, life on earth looked nothing like it does today. In fact, the oceans contained only single-celled microbes. At some point, these single-celled organisms began to work togethe...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/tiny-t-rex-why-life-got-large

In recent years, we've woken up to the massive problem that is dementia. This is where people progressively lose their cognitive faculties and Alzheimer's Disease is one well-known example. But s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dementia-dish

Osteoarthritis, a condition which damages the cartilage in joints, is a painful, debilitating condition. Millions suffer every year, and with an ageing population, that number will only increase....

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-method-diagnosing-osteoarthritis

If robots really are the future, then said future is certainly one step closer as of this week. For the first time ever, a robot has been used in surgery on the human eye. To find out more about ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/worlds-first-robotic-eye-surgery

CRISPR makes it possible to snip out undesired bits of DNA from our cells. This process holds the potential to cure genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis. However, it seems that doing this i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/will-crispr-cure-you-or-cause-cancer

Researchers have found a way to regenerate the enamel - or apatite - that's damaged by tooth decay. Katie Haylor spoke to Alvaro Mata from Queen Mary University of London...Sound effects from www...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/regenerating-tooth-enamel

We know more about the surface of mars than we do about the depths of our own ocean, but scientists from the California Academy of Science created an invention that allows researchers to bring ne...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/marine-elevator-study-deep-sea-fish

Millions suffer from osteoarthritis, a condition that causes joints, especially knee and hip joints, to become stiff and painful. Luckily these joints can be replaced by an implant with usually g...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-are-robots-helping-surgery

Any activity on your daily commute, like walking to the bus instead of just hopping in the car, might reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, says a new study from the University of Cambridge...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/more-active-commute-may-benefit-heart-health

We all love a good hug, whatever our age! Babies are no different. There's growing evidence that skin-to-skin contact is beneficial for babies, so Katie Haylor spoke with Laura Baird and Kelly Sp...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/kangaroo-care-science-snuggles

Hawaii's Big Island has been experiencing a series of volcanic eruptions. What's causing them, and how is it likely to change in the future? To find out, Chris Smith talked to Jessica Johnson, a ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/update-hawaiis-eruptions

Exercise is good for us, it's one of the best things you can do to keep your mind and body healthy for a long age. But perhaps not all exercise is equal. A new analysis out in the British Journal...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/could-exercise-work-be-bad-you

Knowing where Earth's freshwater is accumulating, or perhaps more critically, disappearing is of paramount importance. A new study in Nature has analysed changes in freshwater across the entire p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/where-earths-freshwater-going

Neurodegeneration is a process involved in several serious and debilitating diseases, for which there is often no cure. One of the first steps on the journey towards a treatment to stop neurons d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/understanding-neurodegeneration-mechanisms-disease

Are you struggling to know what to wear for the weather at the moment? One day in the UK it's freezing, the next rain, the next a veritable heat wave. Apart from playing havoc with BBQ plans, thi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-birds-cope-extreme-spring-weather

Tasmanian devils are black, carnivorous, scavenger marsupials that live - perhaps unsurprisingly, on the island of Tasmania. In recent years an intriguing type of cancer has been decimating their...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/scientists-identify-drugs-could-tackle-cancer-tasmanian-devils

Every year millions of people contract malaria, which is a blood parasite infection spread by mosquitoes. And part of the reason why the infection spreads so successfully, scientists now know, is...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-makes-some-people-tastier-mosquitoes

Motorneurone Disease (MND), which is also known as ALS and Lou Gehrig's Disease, is caused by the death of the motor nerves that convey movement instructions from the nervous system to muscles. W...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mice-motorneurone-disease

Motor neurone disease (MND) is a degenerative disease affecting around 5,000 people in the UK. It attacks people's ability to move, speak and breath, and usually is fatal within two years. At the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mice-motorneurone-disease

When people take wildlife products over a border that is under the control of CITES. Some of it is illegal, and this is when Border Force step in, confiscating the items in question and when poss...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ivory-bear-bile-and-tiger-skins-confiscated-contraband

Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, affects hundreds of thousands of people. It's a condition where the body's own immune system attacks a protective layer around nerve fibres called myelin. This prevents...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/reprogramming-skin-cells-treat-multiple-sclerosis

Scientists in the US have uncovered a surprising potential treatment for strokes: short-term sensory deprivation. Strokes occur when the blood supply to the brain is interrupted; this destroys th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/my-whiskers-faster-stroke-recovery-mice

Was exercising more one of your new year's resolutions? Has it ended up a broken promise at the bottom of your to-do list? Georgia Mills spoke to Catherine Meads from Anglia Ruskin University, wh...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/walking-friends-better-walking-alone

Up to a third of women experience debilitatingly heavy periods. This can cause significant disruption. It can also lead to depression; time off work; and, in severe cases, even lead to a low bloo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-causes-heavy-periods

Scientists have shown that a toothpaste ingredient could be used as an anti-malarial drug. Spread by mosquitoes, malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites, and kills over half a million people ev...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/toothpaste-ingredient-helps-fight-drug-resistant-malaria

It's winter time again in the northern hemisphere and the influenza virus - the 'flu - is making its seasonal rounds. The virus infects millions of people every year, and vulnerable individuals w...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/find-out-about-flu

Around one in ten people have to live with tinnitus, this is a persistent noise ringing in the head when there's nothing external causing it. The severity of tinnitus can range from irritating to...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/tinnitus-therapy-trial-success

The question of where life began is a difficult one to answer. While many scientists believe that life began on earth, others believe that life, or at least its building blocks, first formed in s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/could-lifes-building-blocks-have-formed-space

In the run up to Christmas, shops are bursting at the seams with delicious treats, appealing platters and indulgent morsals, which can make sticking to a healthy diet rather unlikely. And food co...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/environmental-implications-healthier-eating

New research shows that peregrine falcons hunt their prey using strategies similar to those used by guided missiles. Could this information be useful in downing drones that are flying where they ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/falcon-inspired-anti-drone-technology

The Great Barrier Reef is a huge system of over 3,800 individual coral reefs - making it the largest coral reef system on earth. Located off the northeastern coast of Australia, it is home to tho...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/corals-matter-most-great-barrier-reef

December 1st is World AIDS Day. HIV AIDS affects 35 million people worldwide, and although the number of new infections is slowly decreasing, last year it still caused one million deaths. The vir...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/future-hiv-research

This week the UN Climate Change Conference has been happening in Bonn. This meeting is the next step for governments to implement the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which entered into force last...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/could-reflective-particles-limit-global-temperature-rise

Last year, Diabetes UK reported that almost 4 million people in the UK are living with diabetes. Around 90% of these cases are classed as Type 2, which is often linked with obesity. Interestingly...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/type-2-diabetes-reversed-rats

Traditionally, researchers have recognised the importance of sleep in modulating the fear learning response when the sleep occurs after fear learning. To understand how sleep, prior to a fear lea...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sleep-protects-against-learning-fear

In 2016, the world champion Lee Sedol was beaten at the ancient boardgame of Go - by a machine. It was part of the AlphaGo programme, which is a series of artificially intelligent systems designe...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ai-learning-without-human-guidance

A drug based on a form of cholesterol might be able to reduce the damage done by heart attacks. Working with experimental mice, scientists in Australia have found that so-called good cholesterol,...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cholesterol-drug-could-protect-your-heart

Imagine it's a Friday night, you're in the pub it's and really noisy. Your friend though is telling a great story, and you really want to hear it. But how do you separate their voice from the din...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-pick-out-voice-crowd

We all use Wi-fi nearly every day. It is short for wireless fidelity, using microwaves frequencies to transmit data to and from your phone. But, visible light can be used to for the same purpose ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/lifi-one-step-closer-our-homes

Scientists in the US have discovered a way to recreate the condition polycystic kidney disease using stem cells in a culture dish. The new culture system means that researchers can now begin to s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/growing-kidney-diseases-dish

Astronomers are trying to understand where our solar system came from, how life got started here, and where else in the galaxy life may be lurking. Chemistry is very important in these processes ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/molecule-dashes-hopes-interstellar-signs-life

Three quarters of the world's honey is laced with neonicotinoid insecticides, a new study from scientists in Switzerland has shown this week. The findings are based on an analysis of nearly 200 h...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/neonicotinoids-majority-worlds-honey

Natural muscle plays an important role in our human ability to control our movements, so could we give this ability to robots? Katie Haylor spoke to Aslan Miriyev from Colombia University in New ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/making-robot-muscle

By 2050, it is estimated that we will need around a 50% increase in crop yield to feed our rapidly growing population. However, it turns out that algae - the slimy green layer often found on the ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/algal-proteins-may-boost-crop-yields

The complex branching patterns seen in the growth of tissues in the lungs, kidneys and pancreas have an elegantly simple mathematical solution... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-do-tissues-grow

We never really notice oral hygiene, except when it's bad. The latest research shows that we can't really blame genetics for this, but rather the oral hygiene of everyone else in your household. ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/household-not-genetics-controls-oral-health

From elaborate peacocks to seagulls by the shore, birds are found in a wide range of habitats on every corner of globe and a recent study suggests that the key to their world domination may all b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/infant-skulls-crucial-bird-success

One major goal of scientists has been to measure the strength of tectonic plates. However, laboratory estimates of plate strength vary widely and in general seem to overestimate strength compared...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/measuring-tectonic-plate-strength

C. diff - or Clostridium difficile - is a superbug that can cause major problems in hospitals. It leads to life-threatening diarrhoea and intestinal inflammation in patients who catch it, it spre...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-drugs-target-cdiff-superbug

Finding new drugs for our various diseases and ailments is one of the biggest industries in the world. But how does so called big pharma operate - how do they choose what to work on and how does ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/where-do-new-drugs-come

Known as the 'forests of the ocean', coral reefs represent an entire underwater ecosystem, teeming with life. But this ecosystem is under threat. Researchers from The University of Queensland and...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/historical-maps-reveal-extent-coral-loss

It's well known that older mothers have more complicated pregnancies. For a long time scientists thought that old eggs were the reason for this and many women have made the decision to freeze the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/uterus-age-may-affect-pregnancy-success

Bacteria produce a molecule that stimulates sexual reproduction in the closest living relatives of animals, according to researchers at UC Berkeley and Harvard Medical School. Like this podcast? ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-bacteria-affect-sex-life-animals

Our hairy insides protect us from the full force of fluids racing through our bodies and may inspire future robotic design Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/our-hairy-insides

Osteoarthritis is a common, painful joint condition that affects about 8 million people in the UK, and many others across the world. It stems from a breakdown of the protective cartilage at the e...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/whats-behind-rise-arthritis

What kinds of food might you be able to forage in a city green space? Katie Haylor went out to explore what wild food Cambridge in the UK has to offer with lifelong forager Antony Bagott.... Like...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/foraging-food

More than half a million people in the UK suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Symptoms of this disease, including memory loss and communication problems, are due to sticky protein build ups within t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-alzheimers-culprit-identified

Short term memory is incredibly important in day to day life, whether you're driving to work, having a conversation, or reading through the Naked Scientists website. However, scientists from Prin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/exposure-violence-weakens-short-term-memory

Alzheimer's Disease is one - very common - form of senile dementia. It usually affects older people and progressively robs them of their mental faculties. It occurs because a protein called beta ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-does-sleep-affect-dementia

Scientists now think they can explain why the hypervelocity stars - that's stars going at 600 - 1000 km per second are only spotted in one part of the sky, in the constellation of Leo, and it's d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/searching-super-fast-stars

Millions of people worldwide are affected by Alzheimer's Disease; Terry Pratchett was famously a victim of the condition, which progressively robs sufferers of their mental faculties. At the mome...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-brain-training-slow-progression-alzheimers

Our coasts are constantly changing. And whilst human impact can have a significant impact Mother Nature also plays her part, tides and storms can change a beach overnight. Continuing with Marine ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-do-beaches-disappear

If you're up for a bit of practical experimentation, give this a go. Hold your finger out in front of your face, fix your gaze on the tip and then shake your head from side to side, or nodding up...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/magnets-control-vision

The third week of June had everyone searching for the suncream as temperatures reached record breaking heights. But while most of us enjoy fun in the sun, prolonged heatwaves can have significant...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/rise-deadly-heatwaves

Many of us enjoy a boiled egg or two for breakfast, but why are hen's eggs round at one end and pointy at the other? Katie Haylor caught up with Mary Stoddard of Princeton University, who's tryin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-lies-behind-eggs-shape

In May 2017 hundreds of thousands of computers across the world were hit by a massive ransomware attack called Wannacry. The perpetrators encrypted the contents of users' computers and demanded p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-wannacry

When viruses attack our crops they can wipe them out, and in some parts of the world, this can be a death sentence. So naturally, scientists are keen to find a way to provide protection against t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ancient-protein-thwarts-virus-attack

Methane is 20 times worse than C02 as a greenhouse gas, so when it's created as a byproduct in oil rigs it's burned. This is better than releasing the methane into the atmosphere but it's not an ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/methane-methanol

Looking at biochemical markers found in blood samples of those with autism and those without, researchers are looking to develop a blood test that could serve as a diagnosis tool for autism spect...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/blood-test-autism

How the plaque found on the teeth of Neanderthals sheds light on their diets and lifestyles. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dental-detectives-shed-light-ancient-diets

Promoting social causes online can mobilise millions and raise huge sums of money. But it only leads to long term changes if the campaigns don't fizzle out prematurely. Social psychologist, Sande...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/making-goodwill-go-viral

A tiny sensor capable of transmitting information from inside the body and powered by stomach acid has been unveiled by US scientists. The device was tested in a pig over the course of a week wir...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/battery-powered-stomach-acid

Some viral infections are more lethal in men than in women. This is usually linked to differences between male and female immune systems. However, mathematical modelling of the different ways som...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-are-viruses-more-virulent-men-women

2016 was another record-breaker in terms of global temperatures, and it's part of a longer-term trend which has seen 15 of the hottest years on record occur since 2001. One victim of this warming...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/plankton-change-genes-combat-climate-change

A chemical found in sharks can block the process that leads to Parkinson's Disease, scientists at Cambridge University have found. Know as squalamine, the substance prevents a protein called alph...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dogfish-steroid-suppresses-parkinsons-disease

Us humans boast about our big brains but until now, evidence has been scant to suggest that animals also benefit from having larger brains. Cambridge University's Corina Logan measured the skulls...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/big-brains-boost-deer

What's your usual Thursday night out? The cinema maybe, or a gig? Well how about a live cheetah dissection at the Royal Veterinary College in London? Don't worry if that's not quite your cup of t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dissecting-cheetah

As the saying goes, "if you don't learn from the past you're doomed to repeat it," or words to that effect; which is why understanding what has happened to the Earth's climate in the past is crit...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/climate-clamity

Carbon monoxide poisoning is the common form of poisoning worldwide. Just in the US tens of thousands of people are killed or hospitalised every year by this odourless and colourless gas, which i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/antidote-silent-killer

An area of rainforest the size of Panama is lost every year to deforestation and we know habitat loss is probably the leading factor driving extinction today. However, another potential problem c...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/does-deforestation-drive-disease

Dark energy, the mysterious unknown entity which permeates all of space makes up 68% of the universe's total energy. Despite being such a large proportion of existence we still can't directly det...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dark-energy-mapped

2D materials are objects that are only one or two atoms thick. Graphene is the most well known of these but many incredibly thin substances exist. These exotic materials are strong, flexible, sem...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-dimension-graphene-production

We've just come to the end of anti-bullying week and with 25,000 children using Childline's counselling sessions in 2015 to talk about bulling it clearly is still a problem for the UK. This probl...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bullying-increases-overweight-risk

Malaria parasites in Cambodia are showing resistance to the front line drug Piperaquine making current treatment useless and putting lives at risk. Dr Roberto Amato, and his team, uncovered the g...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/malarias-drug-resistance-genes-found

When you were little did you ever dream of becoming an astronaut? Well Michael Foale did and he actually made it happen. Born in the UK Foale completed both his undergraduate and doctorate degree...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-be-astronaut

Quantum mechanics describes the properties of light, atoms and the even smaller particles inside atoms, like electrons and protons. On these tiny scales, we observe strange effects that contradic...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/quantum-leaps-quantum-technology

Compared to a lot of the objects in our solar system the Earth's Moon is a bit unusual. A new theory, published in the journal Nature, explains how the Moon got to where it is today. Professor Da...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/lunar-origins-explained

Plants can be good for the planet, nice to look at and often pretty tasty. But what if they were also high tech sensors that we could harness to detect harmful chemicals and even explosives in gr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bionic-plant-sensors

The Paris agreement is an international climate change treaty signed earlier this year by 192 countries and it aims to mitigate man-made global warming. It kicks in from this week. But will its t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ice-free-summers-arctic

Now is there anybody out there? Or should I say is there anybody out there? Graihagh Jackson phones home to BBC broadcaster Dallas Campbell Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Nak...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/are-aliens-out-there

Conditions like Down's Syndrome, which are caused by babies carrying the wrong numbers of chromosomes in their cells, affect about one pregnancy in every 500. There are also many other inherited ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/non-invasive-prenatal-dna-screening

White lies are widely accepted as an integral part of our everyday lives. And yet history has taught us how a series of small transgressions can snowball with detrimental outcomes. But can we rea...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-small-lies-escalate

When most people think of dinosaurs they'll likely conjure up images of the stabbing teeth of the T-rex or the cutting claws of a Velociraptor but what about the squishy bits of dinosaurs? To fin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/first-ever-fossilised-dinosaur-brain-found

According to the Office for National Statistics, the ONS, in England and Wales deaths involving heroin and morphine have more than double since 2012. The ONS say this is partially driven by a ris...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/uk-opiate-deaths-double

We all know that men aren't really from Mars and women aren't really from Venus, we are both from Earth and there are more similarities between sexes and genders than there are differences. But, ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gender-equality-stem

On the 13th of October Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge turned 250 years old. As an established teaching hospital, it trains hundreds of medical students with the final three years their time ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/practising-medicine

Over 35 million people worldwide are living with HIV. Treatments cost billions and don't come without significant side effects for the individual. Now, researchers from Emroy University may have ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/powerful-duo-against-hiv

Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge celebrated its 250th birthday this week. To find out more about the history of the renowned hospital, Georgia Mills was shown around the archives by Hilary Ric...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hospital-histories

Levels in the atmosphere of the greenhouse gas methane released accidentally by the oil and gas industry might be up to 60% higher than climate scientists had budgeted for. A new method combining...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/balancing-methane-budget

What makes dogs man's - or woman's - best friend? Scientists in Sweden gave a pack of dogs an impossible task to do: pushing along a plate that was actually stuck to the floor. The dogs that soug...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/genes-linked-friendly-dogs

Now you'd "bee" forgiven for thinking that bees are just simple insects that buzz about collecting nectar and fertilising flowers. But it turns out they have emotions just like us. Chris Smith sp...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bee-happy

For this week's mythconception, Kat Arney investigates the many mysteries surrounding the notorious Bermuda Triangle. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bermuda-triangle-really-cursed

There is a centuries old debate about violence between people - is it something we're born with, or a product of our environment? Understanding the causes of violence is important if we want to t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/are-humans-born-violent

Since the 1970s scientists have condemned fats - or lipids - as the culprits that cause heart attacks. But while that's certainly true of some fats, it's not the case for all of them. Because one...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/good-fat-fights-bad-fat

We live in an increasingly mobile society, with many of us owning cars and driving around the place for all kinds of reasons - work, leisure, or visiting family perhaps. And this doesn't change a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/older-drivers-drive-safely

Air pollution is a growing problem in many parts of the world, as is an increasing incidence of lung and breathing problems. Although the link is clear, it's not known exactly how air pollution d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-pollution-harms-your-lungs

Is this the dawn of a new era? Or, more accurately, epoch? This week scientists internationally have been voting to create a new geological time defined by our human existence. They're dubbing it...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dawn-anthropocene

How much gold have you got sitting in your desk drawer or up in the attic? Probably more than you think because a surprisingly large amount of the world's gold supply is tied up in old electronic...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gold-garbage

NASA's space probe Dawn has been orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres, which sits between Jupiter and Mars, for the past eighteen months. The probe is sending back data on this small body, which we pr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/secrets-ceres

Scientists often study disease by examining thin sections of biological tissue under a microscope - a bit like watching a film in 2D. That's fine for some, but an organ like the brain is really c...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/see-through-rats-bare-their-brains

Imagine a robot. I'm guessing, after decades of droids and terminators, that the machine you're picturing is something metal, rigid and human-shaped. But this type of robot can only do so much. W...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/meet-octobot-soft-robot-octopus

Although empathy is often associated with traits like helpfulness and generosity, not a lot is known about how helpful behaviour and empathy might be linked in the brain. Now, scientists have pin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/empathy-speeds-learning

It's a well-known fact that, as a woman ages, her chances of falling pregnant drop. And this seems to be driven by a fall in the quality of the eggs that she produces. Why this happens though, in...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-does-female-fertility-fall-age

It's summertime and fields are filled with sunflowers, devotedly following the rising sun. But why do they do it? This is a question that scientists at the University of California, Davis, have s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sunflowers-dance-their-own-beat

For the first time, scientists have found a type of arthritis in dinosaurs and this is important because these creatures have an amazing ability to heal themselves from diseases that would normal...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dinosaurs-stuggled-arthritis

Cases of Zika virus infection in Florida are continuing to rise, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued travel advice urging pregnant women not to travel to certain parts ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/zika-vaccine-breakthrough

Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System - a massive 318 times heavier than Earth - and it has been quite the 'hot spot' for news recently. NASA's Juno probe entered into orbit around Ju...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/great-red-spot-storm-warms-jupiter

Childhood pneumonia is the number one killer of children under the age of five worldwide. The disease is a particular challenge for those living in developing countries, where there is a lack of ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/data-mining-helps-pneumonia-diagnosis

One in 20 people develop colorectal cancer in their lifetime, making it the second-most common form cancer in Europe. Surgery is an option for treatment, but this can result in incomplete removal...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-anti-cancer-patch

Researchers at the University of Helsinki have developed a chewing robot to study the tie between tooth wear and the dietary patterns of animals. Their shiny stainless-steel chewing machine with ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/chewing-robot-lives-paleodiet

People who feel well tend to live well. They have a better immunity against infections and lower susceptibility to ill-health. Stress and depression, on the other hand, are linked to poorer funct...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/power-positive-thought

The most sensitive "electronic nose" ever has been built by scientists in Belgium. The portable "E-nose" uses spongy structures called metal-organic frameworks to pick up minute traces of molecul...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/electronic-nose-senses-pesticides-and-terrorism-threats

It's summertime again and along with ice cream, sunburn and our other favourite British traditions, it's time for the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition, in London. We've been to see what'...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/royal-society-summer-exhibition

A system for growing heart cells on a microscopic silicon grid that can eavesdrop on their electrical behaviour is giving scientists a much clearer picture of how the heart works and providing a ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cyborg-cardiac-patch

Days of squeezing the last drop from your shampoo bottles are over! Thanks to researchers from the US, we now have a material which allows sticky liquids to flow freely AND this has big implicati...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/getting-every-last-drop

Helium is the stuff that goes into party balloons and is also an essential ingredient in hospital MRI scanners. Most people have heard of helium but not many realise that we're in danger of runni...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/life-saving-helium-discovery

Today, NASA's Juno spacecraft has plunged into uncharted territory, flying closer to Jupiter than we've ever been before. Graihagh Jackson spoke to co-investigator of the Mission, Professor Stan ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/juno-probe-plunges-jupiter

Back in February the World Health Organisation declared the zika virus epidemic in Brazil to be a public health emergency of international concern. At the top of the list was the link between Zik...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/two-zika-vaccine-candidates-discovered

Solar Impulse is a unique plane, powered not by jet fuel, but solar energy and it is currently on a record-breaking tour around the world. But how does that plane work and what is it like to fly?...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/solar-powered-jet-makes-historic-crossing

Cells collected from the intestines of patients with the disease cystic fibrosis can be grown in the laboratory dish to produce balls of cells that scientists are calling mini guts. These can be ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mini-guts-testing-cystic-fibrosis-theraphy

When it comes to making musical instruments, there's as much science in today's violins as there is art. While many manufacturers around the world are still creating wooden violins, others are tu...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/silky-sounds-making-violins-silk

Chronic Heart Failure is the inability of your heart to effectively pump blood around your body and affects over half a million people in the UK alone. So what causes it and could treatments lie ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/iron-against-heart-failure

Sudden cardiac death in the young, that's an apparently healthy person dying unexpectedly from heart-related issues under the age of 35, is rare but devastating. It is also something of a mystery...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sudden-cardiac-death-young

Carbon dioxide is a problematic greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. Power plants are major emitters of carbon dioxide, but unfortunately, current methods of capturing and storing exces...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/turning-carbon-dioxide-stone

On June the 1st, Switzerland announced the opening of the world's longest tunnel. Called the Gotthard tunnel, it runs under the Alps to link Northern and Southern Europe; and at 57.5 km, it's fai...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/longest-tunnel-ever-built

Immune cells are essential to the maintenance and repair in our bodies. However, an over-active immune system can lead to diseases such as arthritis, chronically inflamed wounds and atheroscleros...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/immune-system-surprisingly-adaptive

Earlier this year, the US banned microparticle beads from personal care products, but Europe has yet to follow suit. Now, researchers from Uppsala University are increasing the urgency as for the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/fish-prefer-pastic-over-food

A vaccine that can teach the immune system to attack any type of cancer is being developed and tested by scientists in Germany. Cancer affects one person in every three. It's caused by genetic da...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/universal-cancer-vaccine

As a nation, the UK are above the intake guidelines for salt, which, for an adult, is 6g per day. To put that into perspective, there's about half a gram in a small packet of crisps, or one ham a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/does-salt-increase-blood-pressure

Botox is a popular cosmetic treatment where Botulin toxin-A injections paralyse your facial muscles, which relaxes smile lines and makes your skin appear younger. In comedies, it is often joked a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/botox-effects-are-more-skin-deep

This week we're tackling a myth sent in by listener Tim who says, "For many years I heard management gurus talking about the boiling frog syndrome.If you throw a frog into a pot of hot water it w...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/boiling-frogs

Robots are everywhere, from the machines that work in factories to pop culture icons like the Star Wars droids BB8, R2D2 and C3PO. but this is nothing new. Humans have been creating robots for ce...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/500-years-robots

On February 1, 2016, the World Health Organization declared Zika virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern with the virus' continued spread through the Americas. Zika, which was pr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mouse-model-shows-zika-causes-birth-defects

From maths hacks to poker playing bots, could there be a science to help you win big at the casino? Georgia Mills has been practising her poker face with help from Adam Kucharski... Like this pod...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/maths-gambling

The origins of life on earth has been a mystery since, well since life began. Researchers from Germany this week have found a crucial link in explaining how we got from the soup of chemicals on e...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-link-how-life-began

Could limbs have evolved from fish gills? While it might sound fishy, scientists from the University of Cambridge have discovered that the same genetic programme, triggered by a gene called Sonic...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/limbs-gills

In Archaeology is it better to keep an object in the ground or dig it up? Connie Orbach spoke to curators of the Fitzwilliam Museum's Death On The Nile exhibition Helen Strudwick and Julie Dawson...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/archaeology-undisturbed

Humans are awesomely clever, right? We've colonised the world, manipulated our environment, developed incredible technology and can even make brilliant science radio shows like this one. And it's...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/brains-bigger-better

We might have sexually transmitted infections to thank for our modern-day monogamous society, according to a new study from Canada this week. Between ten and fifteen thousand years ago, as agricu...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/have-stis-led-monogamy

The drug LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, was first made in the 1930s in Switzerland by chemist Albert Hoffman, who also tried the agent on himself and described his psychedelic experience. LS...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/will-your-doctor-be-prescribing-lsd-soon

Without satellites operating above us, we would be in considerable trouble; even ATM machines don't work without them! So this week, Graihagh Jackson has been at the Royal Academy of Engineering,...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/invisible-allies-future-satellites

This week, we've had a first glimpse at the wealth of data sent back by the New Horizons probe, which reached Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, last summer. Open University space scientist Davi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-horizons-reveals-plutos-secrets

Strokes are a major cause of permanent disability and they affect millions of people every year. The cause is usually a lack of blood flow to one part of the brain, which destroys the affected br...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-stroke-rehabilitation-technique

ExoMars 2016 launched successfully last week, but why are we going back to the red planet? This mission aims to seek out methane, which could be a crucial clue to whether there is life on Mars. L...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/exomars-spacecraft-launches-successsfully

It is that time of year again when we should start to see bees buzzing around gardens but populations of bees have been declining recently as disease and lack of food stores are hitting them hard...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/whats-killing-bees

Back in the 1960s, US researcher Stanley Milgram stunned the world with a study showing that members of the public were prepared to inflict potentially lethal electric shocks on supposedly innoce...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/coercion-its-easy-be-bad

Results that scientists are describing as "unprecedented" in the treatment of cancer have been announced at a conference this week. A team led by Stanley Riddell, a researcher at the Fred Hutchin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/game-changing-cancer-cure

Many people make the assumption that climate change means that places will become warmer; and indeed some will. But more important in some ways is how the climate in a particular geography might ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mapping-climate-change

American band They Might be Giants, famous for charting singles 'Birdhouse in your Soul' and 'Istanbul', have also made an album all about science. It's called 'Here Comes Science', and aims to t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/here-comes-science-they-might-be-giants

100 years after Einstein predicted them, scientists have finally discovered gravitational waves. For 25 years, hundreds of scientists across 16 countries have been trying to detect these elusive ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gravitational-waves-discovered

Last week, the outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil prompted the World Health Organisation to declare a global health emergency. The virus is spreading fast and has been linked to microcephaly, in wh...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/zika-declared-public-health-emergency

This week, a British researcher got the green light to genetically modify human embryos - this is the first time that gene editing has been approved in embryos. However, it hasn't been met with o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gene-editing-human-embryos

Sperm whales are renowned for being the biggest toothed whales of our seas, migrating thousands of miles every year. But this week, photos of cetacean carcasses were splashed across the media.16 ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-beached-sperm-whales

Science is full of conspiracy theories, the moon landings were faked and climate change is a hoax, but how many of them are likely to be true? Felicity Bedford spoke to Dr. David Robert Grimes fr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/could-conspiracy-theories-be-true

Call the Midwife is one of the UK's best loved TV shows, and the new series has just started on the BBC. But as well as its empathetic characters and gripping story-lines, what makes the show spe...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/behind-scenes-call-midwife

Hibernating animals put their bodies through huge amounts of stress but seem to remain unharmed. Professor Rob Henning from Groningen University explained to Connie Orbach how mimicking their pro...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/free-radicals-miracle-cure

Leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells that normally fight infection. About one person in every 200 will develop the disease, a common form of which is called AML, or acute myeloid leukemi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-leukemia-therapy

The current threat level from terrorism in the UK and many other countries is set to severe, and police and security forces acknowledge that their jobs are being made much harder because today's ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/national-security-algorithm

Dogs drink in a very distinctive way, lapping up water and, more often than not, making a huge mess. But, until now, the exact way they did this has been a mystery. Thankfully, scientists at Virg...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-do-dogs-slurp-so-sloppily

"195 Nations Set Path to Keep Temperature Rise Well Below 2 Degrees Celsius" were the headlines issuing from Paris in the wake of the Conference of the Parties - or COP21 - meeting. So how will t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cop21-results

On Tuesday the UK Space Agency's first official astronaut, Tim Peake embarked on the trip of a lifetime to the International Space Station. The launch was broadcast live on the BBC and watched ar...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/tim-peake-rockets-space

What was the most momentous bit of science that you heard about this year? Every December the journal Science asks its editorial staff this question and they eventually crown one discovery their ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-breakthrough-year-2015

A plant protein used to communicate with friendly soil fungi has been identified by Cambridge University scientists. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/plants-communicate-trade-fungi

How an Acorn grew into, amongst other things, an Apple: What began as a business making home microcomputers now turns out the processing brain behind 95% of the world's smartphones. Mike Muller h...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/arm-25-years-britains-biggest-tech-company

Researchers have linked a gene with your ability to stop smoking, but not all of the scientific community is in agreement... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-genetics-help-you-stop-smoking

People with the best social networks, who sing in choirs; play instruments; go to church and take part in team sports, all live longer and tend to be happier, studies have shown. People who feel ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-loneliness-can-kill

Compulsive sexual behaviour, more commonly known as sex addiction, is driven by the huge novelty provided by online material, a new study has found. Like this podcast? Please help us by supportin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sex-addicts-hooked-online-porn

The choices we make are often down to past experience and the circumstances, including picking partners. However, for a bird called the ruff, the way it picks up ladies is determined genetically....

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/supergenes-can-determine-behaviour

Music can have a huge impact on your emotions. Research published this week in PNAS has shown that if you apply the same sound properties that convey emotion in music and voices to environmental ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sounds-make-you-emotional

Can you remember when your voice broke? According to conventional wisdom most men can't, but women have very strong memories of their first period. This means that studies of puberty timing have ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/puberty-timing-and-health

Cambridge has a rich history of making discoveries about DNA - the genetic code inside each and every one of us. In the 50s Watson and Crick announced that they had unravelled the structure of DN...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-random-are-dna-mutations

Back in August we did a show all about the super material graphene. At the molecular level, a sheet of graphene looks a bit like chicken wire and is only a single atomic layer thick, if you were ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cambridge-graphene-technology-day

At the beginning of November, Kat went up to Liverpool for the annual NCRI Cancer Conference, bringing together scientists, doctors, nurses, patients and more from the UK and around the world to ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-we-prevent-breast-cancer

Respiratory syncytial virus or RSV is a virus of the respiratory system that infects people of all ages during the winter causing colds, however in infants and young children it can lead to much ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-vaccine-rsv

E-cigarettes seem to be everywhere nowadays. Invented by a Chinese pharmacist and patented in 2004, they first went on sale in 2010 and are now the most popular way to quit smoking in the UK. But...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-healthy-are-e-cigarettes

Cataracts are caused when proteins inside the lens of the eye come together. It's a condition that clouds the vision of approximately one hundred and eighty million people worldwide, with surgery...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/eye-drops-treat-cataracts

Despite the hundreds of thousands of babies born every day, we still know relatively little about childbirth and how hormones play their key roles in it. A stress hormone, known as cortisol, is i...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/problem-childbirth

As Winter approaches in some parts of the world, so does the colder weather and the threat of ice on the roads and on your car windscreen. But help is at hand from Kansas State University's Alexa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/frost-prevented-new-material

Steel is used to manufacture a wide range of products from tiny surgical tools to huge ships. However, it can become corroded or contaminated when liquid comes into contact with it. A new method ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/slippery-steel-repels-bacteria

There have been many exaggerated reports this week that birth order, whether you are a first or last born, affects how intelligent you will be compared to your siblings. However, the researchers ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/personality-linked-birth-order

This week the UK science minister, Jo Johnson, was in Cambridge where he announced an initiative to pump 21 million into seven key research programmes intended to tackle some of the leading scien...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/21m-engineering-grand-challenges

You know when after a run you feel great? Well previously scientists thought this runners' high was down to endorphins, but this may not be the case. Johannes Fuss from the University of Heidelbe...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/getting-high-marathon-running

The Human Connectome Project has collected data of hundreds of individuals ranging from brain imaging to genetic and lifestyle information. Now researchers from the University of Oxford have used...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-are-our-lives-are-mapped-our-brains

Every day millions of people are moving around the world by air, land and sea, but they may be bringing with them more than just their luggage. For example, during last year's ebola outbreak, the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/do-people-spread-disease

Fossils have long been used to help us piece together the size and shape of extinct animals, but the colours of these animals has, until now, been something of a mystery. Now researchers from the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/extinct-animal-colours-revealed

This week, with the Rugby World Cup in full swing, the sports chief medical officer, Martin Raftery has called for changes to be made to the rules in order to cut the number of concussions suffer...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/concussion-and-rugby-world-cup

Solar power is growing in popularity around the world, with huge solar farms springing up all over the place. Obviously, solar panels need as much sunlight as possible, but this also means that t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cooling-layer-solar-cells

Sitting for long periods of time has long been associated with negative health effects and is thought to slow down your metabolism. However new research suggests that the movements linked with fi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/fidgeting-could-prolong-your-life

Earmarked for 2024, the European- Extremely Large Telescope will be the biggest telescope in the world. The primary mirror is 39 metres across and capable of collecting as much light at once as a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/extremely-large-telescope

Scientists have announced a revolution in 3D printing. Rather than building things up layer by layer, which is the traditional approach, University of Florida scientist Tommy Angelini prints thin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/3d-printing-body-parts

Scientists in America have helped a paralysed man to take his first steps in over 5 years. They've done it by developing a system that eavesdrops on the patient's brainwaves and can detect when h...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/paralysed-man-walks-again

You may never have heard of the disease lymphatic filariasis, but it affects 120 million people in 70 countries around the world, causing dramatic swelling of the limbs and other parts of the bod...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-insight-parasites

Does being a good parent shorten your lifespan? It turns out the answer is yes, at least if you're a burying beetle. Results from researchers at The University of Cambridge published this week sh...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/good-beetle-parents-die-younger

It has been found that endangered Asian elephants age faster and have fewer offspring if their mothers are stressed when they are born. Researchers at the University of Sheffield measured a hormo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/does-stress-affect-elephant-fertility

People can spend their lives looking for love. We go on awkward dates and let our friends set us up with complete strangers. All in the hope of finding 'the one'.But what's the point of it all? W...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/lovey-dovey-finches

Early intervention is likely to be critical for preventing many age-related diseases; but detecting these diseases at a sufficiently early stage to make a difference is often problematic. Now thi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/age-related-diseases-associated-biological-age

A well known benefit of growing up on a farm is the reduced chance of developing allergies. Evidence shows that children who are exposed to a dusty farm environment from an early age have fewer a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dusty-farms-protect-children-allergies

This month, Cambridge based company Innovia Technology have taken charge of the "Mission Zero Corridor Project". This project aims to make a 12 mile stretch of highway in West Georgia completely ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/green-highways

Getting accurate clocks is really important for all kinds of technologies, especially when monitoring the distant heavens. But even if the clock itself is accurate, how do you know that the right...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/keeping-clocks-accurate

It's long been known that traumatic memories forged in stressful situations can lie buried in the subconscious, yet they can bubble to the surface unexpectedly, triggering strong reactions, flash...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hidden-memories-explained

In the UK we are a nation of dog lovers but how did man's best friend become the speedy, bouncy animal we know today? Well for a long time it has been thought that dogs got faster as their prey d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dogs-evolved-climate-change-not-prey

New research has shown that babies born severely prematurely or underweight are likely to suffer in adulthood with a socially withdrawn personality. Amy Goodfellow met with Professor Dieter Wolke...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/premature-birth-affects-personality

Scientists at King's College London have discovered that genetics makes an unexpectedly large contribution to children's GCSE grades across a wide range of subjects. Kat Arney met with Professor ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gcse-success-its-your-genes

About 8000 people in the UK develop a cancer in their oesophagus - the tube that connects the back of the throat to the stomach - every year. The majority of these people have detectable changes ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pill-string

A decade ago a landmark study was published showing that treating Kenyan children for worm infections could increase their attendance at school, as well as bringing health benefits. Since then, m...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-de-worming-really-improve-school-attendance

How does the way you think influence the music you choose to listen to? Scientists at Cambridge University have developed a test that marries up a person's personality traits including how empath...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/music-tastes-linked-brain-type

Fizzy drinks are often very high in sugar, and doctors suspect that they're likely to be linked to the growing rates of obesity in many countries. Now, by bringing together data from all of the p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sugary-drinks-increase-diabetes-risk-20

Punting is one of the most typically 'Cambridge' of activities, with hundreds of tourists being punted lazily along the river Cam at any one point during summer. Now, though, the Cambridge Scienc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/rocket-powered-punting

Growing a human heart from a single cell may seem like science fiction, but scientists at the Gladstone Institute at the University of California San Francisco, have taken a huge step forward, by...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/growing-human-hearts

Volcanic eruptions can be both beautiful and destructive at the same time, but now scientists have found evidence they may have also been linked to plagues, and even the fall of the Roman Empire....

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/volcanoes-may-have-ended-roman-empire

Marijuana has a reputation for helping people who are in pain. But achieving the analgesic effect comes at a cost: users of the drug complain of memory loss and mood disturbances. Now, by identif...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/benefitting-medically-marijuana

One of the key factors that makes the brain age has been uncovered by scientists in the US. Young mice infused with the blood of older animals developed a drop in their cognitive abilities. This ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-do-our-brains-age

It's hard to miss the fact that bees are in trouble, with worrying news of colony collapse disorder devastating bee numbers, and concerns about the effects of pesticides on our most important pol...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/climate-change-bad-news-bees

How does being driven around in a robotic taxi grab you? Currently, cars contribute 13% to our greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. However, a new study has found that were we to switch to using a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/robocabs-key-curbing-emissions

More than a quarter of people are affected by anxiety or depression each year. But are some people more at risk than others? By studying groups of rhesus monkeys, Dr Ned Kalin from the University...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/predicting-depression-and-anxiety

It's an age-old debate, who feels more pain, men or women? Scientists at McGill University have taken us one step closer to answering this question with a study using mice. Jeff Mogil and his tea...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/men-and-women-may-feel-pain-differently

What do fish and aircraft have in common? Well, water and air are both fluids. And when fish move their tails and bodies from side to side, they push against the surrounding water and leave behin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-do-fish-and-aircraft-have-common

Rejoice because at midnight tonight, a second will be added to clocks across the world. Seeing as you now have all of this extra time, here's Naked Scientist Tom Crawford with everything you need...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/just-give-me-second

One of the world's most widely-used classes of drugs could significantly increase your risk of suffering a heart attack; that's according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University, in ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ppis-increase-heart-attack-risk

Hawkmoths live a shadowy existence; they stick their tongues down the flowers' neck, all the while being tossed about in the wind. And as if that wasn't enough, they do it all in the pitch black....

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/hawkmoths-shadowy-existence-uncovered

While Jurassic World may be wowing the crowds at the cinema, a new study from researchers at Imperial College has been making waves in the world of real-life dinosaurs. Although scientists have p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/75-million-year-old-dinosaur-cells-found

Scientists in the US have developed a new brain implant that can be used to record information from nerve cells, and also to transmit signals into the nervous system, to stimulate parts of the br...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/self-unrolling-brain-implant

Saturn is one of the most well-known planets in the solar system, perhaps owing to its distinctive set of rings. The largest of these rings, the H-ring, was only discovered as recently as 2009 an...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/exploring-saturns-newest-ring

Coffee is an essential part of life for many of us, but could it help to cut depression? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/coffee-staves-depression

Earthquakes occur at faults, or fractures, in the Earth's crust - where two big slabs of rock meet. Movement under the surface tries to push the rocks past each other but the rough edges get stuc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ending-earthquakes-water

The specific genes that cause schizophrenic symptoms have been found by researchers at Cardiff University. A huge study of the DNA of over 10,000 schizophrenics and 15,000 controls helped identif...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sequencing-schizophrenia

How our ears screen out sounds so that we can listen selectively only to those sounds we want to hear - like a friend's voice across a noisy room for instance - has been revealed by scientists in...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/selective-hearing

Humans, like all other primates, are a sociable bunch and we tend to pick friends who are fairly similar to us in terms of education, religion, personality and so on. Now researchers studying a t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/baboon-buddies

Dressing in red around the office might have your colleagues seeing you in a different light! A new study from Durham University's Robert Barton has found that when the same person is shown weari...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/study-scarlet

The incidence of many diseases, including heart attacks and multiple sclerosis, peaks in winter time. Now it looks like this could be an unfortunate throw-back to our prehistoric origins. Cambrid...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/winter-immune-blues

A campaign to combat "over-treatment" of patients has been announced by doctors' leaders this week. Called "Choosing Wisely", the initiative promotes more open conversations between doctors and p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/choose-your-treatment-wisely

Plants and animals are incredible constructions, built from the fundamental building blocks of cells. But how are we made? By modelling how algae cells literally turn themselves inside out, resea...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cells-turn-inside-out

Content curation and news filtering by Facebook, as well as other social media websites, likely leads to ideological biases in the information individuals see and read, a new study has shown. Lik...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/facebook-leads-biased-views

If you are thinking of raising money for charity, what's the best way to ensure you hit your fundraising target? According to Nichola Raihani from UCL, you need to be an attractive woman so men w...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/males-donate-competitively

You are not alone! Your body is home to a whole host of bacteria that live in and on you: your microbiome. You might be slightly repulsed by this idea, but these tiny organisms are really importa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/modern-lifestyles-reduce-gut-bug-diversity

Salmonella bacteria can be modified to make a safe anti-cancer treatment, scientists have shown. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gm-salmonella-shrinks-cancers

While you listen to a noise, nerve cells in your brain are busy processing sound information and helping you make sense it. One big mystery in the world of hearing research has been how we percei...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-do-we-hear-time-within-sounds

Druham Universtiy's Richard Massey takes Chris Smith to a galaxy far, far away; or, more accurately, several galaxies over, which also happen to have just collided with each other, providing in t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/dark-matter-may-not-be-completely-dark

How the Earth came by its Moon has always been something of a mystery: Scientists had theorised that a Mars-sized planet, called Theia, crashed into Earth and that the moon formed from the debris...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-moon-was-made

Evidence has been revealed that a type of dinosaur fell victim to occasional cannibalism. Daspletosaurus was a member of the tyrannosaurs group, and relative of the famous T. rex. A skull was fou...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/evidence-dinosaur-cannibalism

A favourite Easter tradition are hot cross buns, but there's one particular ingredient which no bread can do without: yeast. What is about this strange powdery ingredient that makes it so useful?...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/yeast-rising-bread

If you've ever seen huge flocks of birds or a shoal of fish, you might have wondered how they are all able to move together without ever colliding. Now scientists at the University of Bristol bel...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/listening-bat-highway-code

Anyone who has struggled with a lousy WiFi connection in a busy public space knows only too well that there are limits to how much data can be beamed over the airwaves like this. Now scientists h...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-light-can-transmit-wifi

Geologists like to divide up history into epochs, or eras, separated by events that leave an indelible mark in the geological record of the earth - for example, the meteorite strike that finished...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/when-humans-made-their-mark-world

In a remote area in the Andes mountain there exist perilously high levels of arsenic: one of the most toxic substances known to man. But people have been living there for thousands of years, and ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/adapting-arsenic

Dr Kat Arney meets Sophie the Stegosaurus, and Natural History Museum researcher Charlotte Brassey. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sophie-stegosaurus

After a seven and a half year journey, and with a price tag just shy of half a billion Dollars, NASA's Dawn spacecraft finally has the asteroid Ceres in its sights. Ceres is a massive asteroid wh...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-can-we-learn-nasas-dawn-probe

FameLab is a competition where scientists battle it out to be the best at giving engaging short talks on their favourite areas of research. Six Cambridge-based finalists have been chosen by a pan...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/famelab-snapping-shrimp

Using a new super powerful electron microscope, scientists have discovered tiny holes are responsible for giving brown diamonds their colour. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the N...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/holes-give-diamonds-their-colour

Worms are about to help scientists to boldly go where no researcher has been before, by venturing into space to help us to understand how changes in gravity might affect our DNA. Although scienti...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/space-worms

It makes up most of the stuff in our universe, but we can't see it or weigh it - but we know it has to be there. This elusive substance is dark matter, and according to a new paper in the journal...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/detecting-dark-matter

Has anyone ever told you to lose a few pounds? Get a bit more active? Work harder in school? We can sometimes become a bit defensive when given this type of advice even if we know it's probably t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/positive-thinking-improves-your-health

Your brain is more complex and powerful than the world's biggest supercomputer, built while you're a baby growing in the womb from the recipes encoded in your genes. But how do your growing brain...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/differences-between-male-and-female-brains

A novel approach to detecting interactions between scorpion venom and its target molecule could aid in the discovery of new drugs for treatment of a wide range of nerve disorders. Like this podca...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/venom-medicine

What are so-called "3 parent embryos", and what are the arguments for allowing it? Hannah Critchlow discussed the issues with MP Julian Huppert, who supported the recent motion to permit the proc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mitochondrial-diseases-3-parent-embryos

Around 250 million years ago our world was a very different place. Rather than the different continents we know today, there was only one giant land mass - Pangea - covered with plants and animal...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-close-are-we-next-mass-extinction

Humans do it. Primates do it. And now it's been found out that birds can also do it - 3 day old chickens have been shown to order numbers low to high, from left to right - just like on a ruler! T...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/chicks-can-count-too

Quill pens might be about to make a comeback - but not in a stationers! Because researchers have developed a nano-scale ink pen that can be used to control the shapes of polymers that can be used...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/nano-scale-quill-pen

A new breed of super metals, that are extremely water repellent have been created. Their potential applications range from rust and frost free aircraft to self-cleaning toilets. Danielle Blackwel...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/super-slippery-water-repellent-surfaces

Sea turtles follow unique magnetic signatures to return to their home beaches to lay their eggs. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sea-turtle-sat-nav

Bar-headed geese reach altitudes of several thousand meters in their annual migration across the world's highest mountain range. A new study shows that they have a peculiar way to save energy on ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/geese-fly-over-himalayas-roller-coaster

Over 3000 people are killed on the world's roads every day with further 20-50 million people left injured or disabled. And whilst the number of serious injuries have come down - one type of injur...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/crashing-cars

A common New year's resolution is to hit the gym and get fit. But while most people might give up and return to the comfort of the sofa by February, research suggests that being physically active...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-cycling-keep-you-younger

Could a brain scan predict your weight, your school grades and your happiness levels two years down the line? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/could-brain-scan-predict-your-future

Whether it's an outing to the cinema or gathered in the living room, films are a great way to spend time as a family at Christmas. If children are involved, the choice of title will often be made...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cartoons-are-deadly-lead-roles

Last week scientists attending the American Geophysical Union meeting in California unveiled measurements made on Mars by the Curisoity rover, which has been exploring the red planet for the last...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/has-curiosity-found-life-mars

People often talk about feeling their age, but how old you say you feel is strongly linked to your life expectancy. A new study at UCL in London has shown that people who feel their age, or feel ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/feeling-old-shortens-your-life

There's the old saying that if you want to understand someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. But what if you could walk in their actual body? Thanks to virtual reality headsets, this is ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/machine-makes-people-more-empathic

How do we know about the ancient animals that used to roam the Earth? If all life got its start in the sea, then why do most animals now live on land?Sara Sjosten went behind the scenes at the Se...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/foraging-fossils

Luis von Ahn invented CAPTCHA - the system that uses a picture of a word to determine whether you are a human or a computer. But when von Ahn realised just how much time was being wasted by filli...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/recaptcha-luis-von-ahn

What's the science behind the so-called 5:2 or intermittent fasting diet? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-behind-fasting

Does your dog pay attention to what you say? Thinking back to the last time it rolled in something stinky, or ran off with your socks, you may not be convinced. But new research from the Universi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/does-your-dog-understand-you

Marie Blackman Northwood is a biomedical scientists normally based in Cambridge,who is currently in Sierra Leone, lending her hand to the fight against Ebola. She spoke to Chris Smith about her e...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/fight-against-ebola

Religion and nature might have more to do with each other than you thought. In the biggest study of its kind, a team of evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, linguists and religious scholars ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/religion-and-nature

Are you a morning person or a night owl? Whichever you are, your daily rhythm is determined by your circadian clock - powered by a small group of cells in the brain - and it tells you when to get...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/body-clocks

Just a handful of genetic changes are what turned wildcats into domestic pets, scientists have now shown. And many of these changes are linked with genes that affect how the brain processes rewar...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-wildcats-became-kitty-cats

Researchers say that doing anti-social shifts over many years can dent your brain power. In other words you can't think straight. The team collected data from three thousand workers in France, wh...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/shift-work-shafts-brains

Tim Bussey, professor, budding rock star and performer explains to Hannah Critchlow how he's addressing scientific gender inequality with a re-release from the 80s... Like this podcast? Please he...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/women-science

Would you prefer your prime minister, president, or beloved leader to look healthy, intelligent, or both? Researchers from the VU University of Amsterdam say that given the choice, people priorit...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/healthy-looking-leaders

The quest to understand the fundamental rules governing life has taken another step forward, as new research from the University of Cambridge reveals. Like this podcast? Please help us by support...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/imaging-genome

As international trade increases, particularly by sea, we're seeing more stowaways; but not of the human variety. Scientists are reporting that animals and plants are hitching rides around the wo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/foreign-species-invading-uk

Whilst Magic - a young golden retriever - may love chasing a stick, curling up on a rug and enjoying a biscuit as much as the next dog, he is certainly no ordinary dog. Trained by Milton Keynes b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/detection-dogs

Which part of our brain helped us become the social and (for the most part) intelligent creatures we are today? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smartest-part-our-brain

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Tamara Galloway, Matt Cole and Ceri Lewis of the University of Exeter talk about their research on the effects of fragments of plastics from food packaging,...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/how-plastic-pollution-may-harm-marine-life

Thousands die due to alcohol consumption each year, did raising the price of alcohol in the UK reduce these costs? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/price-alcohol

Until recently when technology took over, a coal miner's best friend was a caged canary that would warn of a build-up of life-threatening gases. Now US scientists are saying that the sense of sme...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/your-nose-knows-death-imminent

During an asthma attack, inflammation in the airways leads to breathlessness, and severe cases can end up with sufferers being hospitalised or even dying.One culprit that can make asthma worse is...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/common-cold-and-asthma

You can forget Jurassic Park because actually dinosaurs are all around us! And I'm not joking because the fact is that when you see a chirping bird, you're actually looking at a modern dinosaur. ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-dinosaur-arms-turned-bird-wings

Hydrogen is regarded as an excellent candidate future fuel on the grounds that it is relatively easy to store and it burns cleanly to produce only heat and water. But present methods of productio...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/new-solar-cells

We've all heard that whales and dolphins have a highly developed way of making sounds to communicate with each. However when it come to ordinary fish you'd have thought they're pretty silent thin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/do-baby-fish-speak

A cardiac arrest is when a person's heart stops beating and they collapse. It affects 30,000 people every year in the UK.The majority of these occur outside the hospital setting and they're frequ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/best-place-cardiac-arrest

Are you a strategic decision maker? Is your brain anterior cingulate cortex switched off or on? Are random decisions being made or are you basing them entirely on past experience?Alla Karpova dis...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/strategic-decision-making-revealed

World leaders had been planning for a world population of about 9 billion by 2050. But now a new analysis, based on fresh data and more advanced statistical methods, suggests that this estimate m...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/worrying-world-population

Wireless connections are everywhere now. Perhaps you're listening to us through your smartphone or laptop, or maybe you have one of those new-fangled smart fridges connected to the internet.Techn...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ant-sized-radios

Scientists have been able to alter the emotional associations of memories mice by using a technique called optogenetics, which involves shining lights inside the brain. Roger Redondo explained to...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/modifying-mice-memories

The karma-sutra for back pain may soon be arriving. Within the UK and abroad, there are striking percentages of men and women that report experiencing back pain, especially in later life, and thi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sex-and-back-pain

Something bothering you? Don't want to visit a doctor to talk about your problems? An online tool called 'myGRiST' due to be released early next year to the public, aims to assess your risks and ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mental-health-support-online

From 'plastic' solar panels to flexible electronics, and quantum mechanics to regenerative medicine, we found out about the exciting research of the nominated rising star scientists at the Britis...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/epsrcs-rising-stars

Previously undiscovered monuments surrounding the stone circle have been found, using highly advanced geophysical tools and laser scanners in order to search the landscape and identify what lies ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/unlocking-stonehenges-secrets

A 'pocket-doctor' smartphone app may now help to diagnose Parkinson's, a degenerative motor disease, that was previously very difficult to assess. With symptoms such as voice tremors and walking ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/parkinsons-pocket-doctor

You may have heard reports of seemingly healthy young athletes suddenly dropping down dead in the middle of a game. Professor Paulus Kirchhoff from the University of Birmingham studies the geneti...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sudden-death-athletes

Have you ever heard of someone dying of a broken heart? In fact, it is remarkably common for elderly people who were previously healthy to die soon after their spouse. But why? New research from ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bereavement-suppresses-immune-system

Octopuses and cuttlefish are well known for their astonishing ability to change colour almost instantaneously. Can we copy this system to create a camouflaging material? John Rogers from the Univ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/colour-changing-cuttlefish

Cancer is one of the world's biggest killers, and current treatments often have terrible side effects. So scientists have begun looking into ways to help the body's own defenses fight back. When ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/your-immune-system-vs-cancer

Have you ever seen somebody in the street and thought you know them, until you get closer and realise it's a different person entirely. Matching faces to memories or pictures is easier for some p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/problem-passports

Memory boosting drugs, the military, the legal system and enhancing athletes mental focus and muscle tone. Where should neuroscience stop? How a revolution in technology is bringing an unpreceden...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-neuroscience/wired-society

Stardust returns Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/star-dust

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ilik Saccheri and Arjen Van 't Hof of the University of Liverpool describe how the British Peppered Moth changed from peppered to black during the Industria...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/evolution-british-peppered-moth

Going back through the generations, eventually you come to the ancestor of all life on earth, something scientists call LUCA (last universal common ancestor).LUCA lived on a hydrothermal vent dee...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/our-leaky-ancestor

One of the remarkable things about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico four years ago was the fact that a lot of the contamination was cleaned up by bacteria which simply ate th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-make-energy-oil-eating-microbes

Hello I'm Naked Scientist Hannah Critchlow and I'm concerned about aging. Alzheimer's disease affects around half a million of us in the UK alone, and this number is predicted to increase as the ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-neuroscience/remembering-live-ripe-old-age

Type "mad scientist hair" into Google and the number one result is this man, who is one of the country's leading lights in green chemistry but has also attracted a fan base of thousands online wi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/conversation-martyn-poliakoff

Were you a bookworm as a child? If you were, it might be making you smarter as an adult, according to a new study of identical twins, revealing that better reading ability at a younger age is lin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/will-reading-child-make-you-smarter-adult

A large international study has uncovered the strongest evidence yet for a genetic link to schizophrenia. The study, published in Nature this week, is the work of a large collaborative group of s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/there-genetic-link-schizophrenia

Dogs may become jealous if owners pay more attention to another dog. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/do-you-own-jealous-dog

When you're deciding what to have for dinner tonight, you might like to think about the environmental impact the food you're choosing. It's long been known that vegetarian crops take up less room...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/true-cost-farming

Seals are using windfarms and under sea pipelines as bases for their hunting and fishing exploits. St Andrews University scientist Deborah Russell and her Dutch colleagues glued GPS trackers to t...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-windfarms-affect-seals

Marshall Montrose, of the University of Cincinnati, explained to Chris Smith how these gut bacteria, present in half the population's stomachs, can cause problems. Small wounds in the stomach lin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/gut-bacteria-seek-out-injuries

Ifat Levy from Yale University explains to Kat Arney her recent study which looked at participants ability to learn in a task which exposed them to images of money and food. Obese women who were ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/obesity-affects-learning

Fruit flies to understand getting our sleep bank account in credit, how we perceive passing of time to help make up our minds in tricky situations. Plus in the news, people prefer shocks to thoug...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-neuroscience/your-sleep-account-credit

Would you kill a person to save five others? Does religion evade morality by omission? And can you tweak people's motivations? Reporting on Morality and Motivation in Milan, with breaking hot neu...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-neuroscience/morality-and-motivation

Every year the Royal Society hosts the Summer Science exhibition, where members of the public get a chance to see some of the amazing work being done by scientists around the UK. The Naked Scient...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/summer-science-exhibition-2014

How long could you be left alone with your thoughts? 10 seconds? A minute? Well, according to a new study published in the journal Science, people really don't like to be left alone with nothing ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/people-prefer-shocks-thoughts

Neonicotinoids are a group of chemical used as a pesticide on crops. In fact, they're so effective at killing pests, they're currently the most widely used insecticide in the world.These chemical...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/neonics-linked-honeybee-decline

Passwords are a tricky business, with thousands of people forgetting them every day, and some being hacked or guessed. The University of York has tested the idea of using recognisable faces which...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-we-use-faces-passwords

As of midnight on Tuesday, the herb "qat" became a Class C drug. Users chew the leaves of this east African flowering plant to achieve a buzz which, some say, is similar to caffeine. The ban is s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/uk-government-bans-qat

Using a cheap chemical used normally to make tofu stick together, scientists at the University of Liverpool have stumbled upon a much more environmentally-friendly and cheaper way to manufacture ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cheaper-solar-panels

It's not just conversations that we share with our mobiles, but also our bacterial blueprints! According to Oregon scientist James Meadow, every time you interact with your phone you deposit a bu...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mobile-microbiomes

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis or the '100 day cough', kills around 300,000 people per year, but is one of the most common diseases that can be prevented by vaccine. Children in Britain ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/do-we-need-another-whooping-cough-vaccine

You've probably heard the idea that stress gives you a heart attack, and we certainly know that it is a risk factor, along with things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and smok...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-stress-causes-heart-attacks

Salamanders can grow back entire limbs if they lose them. A team at University College London lead by Dr Max Yun are looking at the genetic pathways that enable these amphibians to regenerate the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/why-salamanders-cant-get-legless

The latest digital imaging techniques are literally throwing new light on the ingenious variety of materials that have been used over the centuries to create artists' paint pigments. A new exhibi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-making-colour

Six months after some of the worst flooding witnessed in Britain, Professor David Dermeritt from Kings College London explains to Graihagh Jackson how these deluges have changed Britain's policie...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/future-flooding-britain

This week, 3000 metres up a Chilean mountain, scientists pressed the button to blow up half a million tonnes of rock. The mountain's called Cerro Armazones and the reason it was being blown up wa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mountaintop-blasted-build-largest-telescope

Bacteria that can degrade the woody material in plant waste and turn it into an oil-free material for plastics manufacture have been developed by scientists at Warwick University in Britain. Prof...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/renewable-bioplastics

There's a new theory this week claiming that men's faces evolved to take punches. It comes from researchers at the University of Utah and goes against a previous theory that craniofacial evolutio...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/one-two-punch-evolution

Has the likelihood of alien life existing just become a lot more likely? Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics announced this week that they have found what's being dubbe...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/massive-super-earth

Gannets are using fishing boats as fast-food outlets, chasing them for miles over the ocean. Thomas Bodey explains to Chris Smith how GPS tracking on both the birds and ships shows that the ganne...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/seabirds-chase-ships-food

Does Nicolas Cage cause people to drown in swimming pools? Does margarine consumption lead to divorce? Tyler Vigen looked at relations between seemingly unrelated statistics to highlight how corr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/does-nicolas-cage-cause-drownings

The course of true love never did run smooth and this can be seen across the animal kingdom too. The Malacological Society of London held their annual meeting and this year it was all about sexua...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/battle-sexes

With as much as 30% of all species potentially at risk of extinction, there is a 'Noah's ark' problem of selecting which species to save. This week the Royal Society held a meeting to discuss ext...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/selecting-species-save

The peculiarities of the naked mole-rat: what can we learn from them? Cambridge University pharmacologist Ewan St John Smith hosts this meeting of Cafe Scientifique, Cambridge, kicking off with a...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/naked-mole-rat

UK Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts, becomes his own radio presenter; here, on a tour organised by the UK's Science and Innovation Network, he charts his meetings with scientists...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/david-willetts-aaas-audio-blog

Addressing the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2014 meeting in Chicago, David Willetts, UK Minister for Universities and Science, outlines how the special relationship ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/david-willetts-speech-aaas

Moving house is one of life's most stressful events; so imagine packing up 4 million artifacts of a museum collection. That's exactly what they are doing at Cambridge University's museum of Zoolo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/packing-museum

Polio might not have been seen in Britain since the 1980's, but despite worldwide efforts the potentially fatal disease is still endemic in three countries. Kate Lamble caught up with the Directo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/can-we-eradicate-polio

In The Naked Scientists Guide to Genetics, Simon Bishop explores some common genetics terms, meets a creature from the depths of the sea floor, and befriends a family of fancy rats! The terms DNA...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/naked-scientists-guide-genetics

Recorded at the 2013 Genetics Society Autumn Meeting 'From Genes to Shape', Simon Bishop meets Harriet Johnson, who works on the genes behind left-right asymmetry... in snails. Like this podcast?...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/genes2shape-asymmetry-snails

Recorded at the 2013 Genetics Society Autumn Meeting 'From Genes to Shape', Simon Bishop meets Marco Reitz, who works on the conserved gene 'Tubby'. So-called because mutant Tubby creates obese m...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/genes2shape-tubby-obesity-drought-tolerance

The mental scars left after trauma and how ecstasy can help treat post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/afghanistan-brain

Could plankton hold the key to understanding ancient climate conditions? New research suggests ocean temperatures from 200 million years ago could be encoded in sea shell chemistry. Simon Bishop ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/weather-forecast-dinosaurs

Tuberculosis is a major world problem, but extremely difficult to treat - vaccines are toxic to humans, and the disease-causing bacteria have a habit of hiding in the very cells tasked with destr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bodyguard-drugs-and-tb

Super energy-rich biofuels could soon be possible because of new research, dramatically reducing the environmental impact of intensive farming. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/packing-plants-eco-energy

Dr. Jack Gilbert explains some of the surprising effects that microorganisms can have on our lives. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-important-are-microorganisms-all-around-us

How do you look for the cause of a brand new medical problem? Simon Bishop speaks to Professor David Goldstein about using genetic sequencing to uncover the cause of new disorders. Like this podc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/diagnosing-emerging-disorders

HIV attacks the immune system, invading one type of cell called a CD4 lymphocyte. The virus encourages infected cells to sidle up alongside healthy, uninfected cells before making them unload an ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/stopping-hiv-spread

One of Perth, Western Australia's best-loved and most striking birds - the red-tailed black cockatoo - once common, is now in severe decline. Victoria Gill met Murdoch University's Dr Kristen War...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/red-tailed-black-cockatoo-conservation

Until recently, it has been extremely difficult to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease, as the neurons of the brain which are affected by the disease are impossible to view directly. How...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/tackling-tangles-alzheimers-disease

The Victorian Science Spectacular came to Newcastle as part of the British Science Festival, and Ginny Smith went along to see what it was all about, and caught up with some of the performers aft...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/british-science-festival-2013-victorian-science

Ancient parasites could be used to cure severe allergy sufferers according to new research from the University of Cambridge. Matt Burnett discovers how Dr Piers Mitchell has unearthed which paras...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bsa-2013-ancient-parasites-treat-allergies

This week after public vote, the Blobfish was announced to be the world's ugliest animal. The poll was run by Ugly Animal Preservation Society, a group of comedians and scientists who are part of...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/british-science-festival-2013-ugly-animal-preservation-society

Sugata Mitra's 'Hole in the Wall' experiments in a New Delhi slum showed how easily children can learn using the internet, with no adult supervision or guidance. He terms this Minimally Invasive ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/british-science-festival-2013-sugata-mitras-school-cloud

Is real-time blood sugar monitoring on your phone a pipe dream? Not according to Professor Mike Trenell at Newcastle University. Matt Burnett finds out about the diabetic athletes testing a new d...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/diabetes-management-your-phone

Inspired by biological systems that can self-repair, Diane Gardner is working on polymer 'ligaments', micro capsules of regenerative fluid and even embedded bacteria that can help concrete to rep...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/self-healing-concrete

The population of the modern world is ageing. However, not everyone's quality of ageing is equal and simple factors, such as where we live, can have a major impact on how healthy we are in to old...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/british-science-festival-2013-healthy-life-simulation

Dancing is a complicated skill, and learning a new routine changes the brain. Ginny Smith caught up with Antonia Hamilton and Emily Cross at the British Science Festival to find out more about th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/autism-and-dancing

Physicist Chris Frost explains, at the British Science Festival 2013, how cosmic rays disrupt the everyday technologies we rely on, as he outlines for Naked Scientist Priya Crosby... Like this po...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/british-science-festival-2013-cosmic-rays-and-technology

Rutherford Appleton Central Laser Facility scientist Dr Ceri Brenner enlightens Ginny Smith about the world of lasers at the British Science Festival, 2013. Like this podcast? Please help us by s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/british-science-festival-2013-ceri-brenner-lasers

Today marks the first day of the fourth test in the Ashes and while England have already retained the urn, they're hoping that their spin bowlers, including the likes of Monty Panesar can help se...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-spin-bowling

Diamonds are the new best friends of laser scientists.A new world of lasers is now being created through research which is harnessing the exceptional qualities of diamonds. It will open up new po...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/diamond-lasers-just-james-bond-fantasy

Enceladus, the tiny Saturnian satellite, regularly issues jets of salty water from its south pole that reaches kilometres in height above the moon's surface. But what drives this process? Gravita...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-makes-plumes-enceladus-matt-hedman

We are often encouraged to relax during our lunch break, but research suggests that this can do interesting things to our minds. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientis...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-working-lunch

How can you make sure you are safe when you cycle? It might be more difficult that you think to ensure cars spot you... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cycle-safety

Scientists at the University of South Australia have shown that regular exercise can dramatically reduce your risk of having a stroke in later life. Priya Crosby spoke to first author on the pape...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/exercise-away-risk-stroke

Last week, a group at the University of California, Davis, released a paper which highlights the potential for the use of MRI brain scans in the diagnosis of autism in children. Priya Crosby spok...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/brain-scans-improve-autism-diagnosis

The Cambridge Botanic Gardens play host to a giant water lily, with leaves a small child can stand on, and a flower that undergos an overnight sex change. Ginny Smith went to talk to Alex Summers...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/giant-water-lily

Dark matter has long been needed by cosmologists to explain how structures like galaxies remain so strongly bound together. Catherine Peymans from the University of Edinburgh tells me about the l...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/events/nam-2013/national-astronomy-meeting-thursday

Last week marked the 101st birthday of the code-breaker and computer scientist Alan Turing, so Ginny Smith met up with James Grime, from the Enigma Project, to find out more about the German code...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/enigma-machine

What will the last remaining lifeforms on the Earth look like as the Sun swells to become a red giant star? And why might future robotic explorers of the Moon find themselves engulfed in dust? Bo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/events/nam-2013/national-astronomy-meeting-wednesday

I find out how the British Geological Survey is investigating the threat that solar storms pose to the world's electricity grids. David Southwood, President of the RAS, tells me that astronomy is...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/events/nam-2013/national-astronomy-meeting-tuesday

David Southwood, President of the Royal Astronomical Society, tells me why NAM is so important to him. I hear about plans to double the size of the Liverpool Telescope, the sparkles in the Sun wh...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/events/nam-2013/national-astronomy-meeting-monday

Technological advances in racquets and balls are changing the way tennis is played, including allowing us to reach incredible 163mph serves. To find out how, Ginny Smith visited a tennis court in...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/technology-and-tennis

Clinical Neuropsychologist Barbara Sahakian explains why some people find it difficult to make decisions that are beneficial to them, and how drugs could help. Like this podcast? Please help us b...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/how-do-we-make-right-decisions

Catalysts Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/catalysts

Ginny Smith talked to scientists performing at Chetenham Science Festival, as well as trying out some hands- on activities. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/naked-cheltenham

We were discussing on the radio today how random numbers are generated, and how could it be proved - to the satisfaction of a mathematician - that the number really is random? Evan Stanbury expla...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-random

A campaign has been launched to stop science toys being sold by some stores as "toys for boys". But what does science say on the matter? Introduced here by BBC 5 Live's Dotun Adebayo, Ginny Smith...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/science-toys-boys

Continuing from our podcast Restoring the Masters, Sally Woodcock, a PhD student from the Hamilton Kerr Institute talks about how we restore old oil paintings to their former glory. Like this pod...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/touching-art-restoration

This month we explore science 'in action' as we discover how researchers at the synchrotron are experimenting with implants, industrial catalysts and engine materials In-Situ! We discover how man...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/science-situ

Breasts, bazookas, bosons and bombs: The Naked Scientists take to the stage for the Cambridge Science Festival 2013. An explosive mix of fertile conversation and kitchen science... Like this podc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bang-naked-science-festival

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at the potential to generate up to 20 per cent of the UK's electricity from tidal energy; and why understanding the nuts and bolts of turtles' sex li...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/tidal-energy-turtle-mating-habits

Cambridge chemist and biotechnologist Shankar Balasubramanian discusses DNA sequencing and its implications for health and disease. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scien...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/what-does-dna-sequencing-do-me

We spoke to Emma Smith, a PhD student with the British Antarctic Survey about her work whilst she was based in the icy noth of Svalbard... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Nake...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/ice-quakes-svalbard

Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch is the Cambridge Science Festival's guest director this year, meaning he's been assisting the Cambridge University festival team with putting together the progr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/benedict-cumberbatch

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why textbook illustrations of our early ancestors may have to be re-drawn; and why underwater canyons contain a wealth of life, including some rather ugly-l...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/our-ancient-ancestors-deep-sea-worms

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: decoding the ash tree's entire genetic sequence to produce a strain which is more resilient to ash dieback; the challenges of extracting biofuels from algae...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/using-genetics-save-ash-tree

Researchers at Cambridge University announced the discovery of a new way to attack the bacterial "superbug" Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which accounts for 6% of all hospital acquired infections and c...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pseudomonas-aeruginosa-martin-welch

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how a virus brought to the UK by insects poses a worrying threat to the country's great tit population; and which new technologies could affect global biodi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/avian-pox-uk-great-tits-top-conservation-issues

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why understanding where plankton congregates can help us protect basking sharks and other marine creatures; how primates planning ahead tells us about our o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/climate-tipping-points-basking-sharks-primates

How can we protect neurons from degeneration? In this podcast from Cambridge Cafe Scientifique, we hear how understanding transport of proteins and other chemicals within individual nerve cells m...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/protecting-nerves-damage

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at some of the highlights from 12 months of the Planet Earth Podcast, including: a hairy crab; earthquake monitoring in Turkey; air quality around Lo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/planet-earth-podcast-highlights-2012

This month, we look back at Diamond's ten year anniversary celebrations to discover novel ways to store hydrogen gas, analyse the risks of a toxic mudspill and engineer tissues to prevent prematu...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/best-synchrotron-science-2012

How does a radio broadcast work? We must have been on your wavelength this week, as we had more questions that we could fit in Naked Scientists Show! Here are the extra bits... Like this podcast?...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/extra-questions-science-behind-broadcasting

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how you can get involved in any one of the wealth of UK citizen science projects that have taken off recently, and why a little-known gas given off by many ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/citizen-science-projects-plants-and-greenhouse-gases

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: an online tool to identify bats is helping to protect them, and it could make a scientist of us all. Also, an audio diary from a researcher from the Nationa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/bat-calls-weather-balloons-telomeres-and-ageing

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at potential solutions to urban flooding, and why scientists are so keen to measure carbon dioxide flow through the UK's Norfolk Fens. Like this podc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/solutions-urban-flooding-peatland-carbon-storage

Fiction and Science collide this month as we discover the stories lurking beneath the surface of the synchrotron. We open up the books to investigate a disease outbreak on the grounds of Diamond ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/stories-synchrotron

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how conservationists are using science to help protect rare plants found only in Bristol's Avon Gorge, and are feminised fish changing wild fish populations...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/unique-plants-bristol-contraceptives-and-fish

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why salt marshes are so important, but are difficult to recreate; how storms are made; and why the ground beneath our feet could provide decades of natural ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/man-made-salt-marshes-ground-heat-storms

Sir John Gurdon, from Cambridge University, talks to Chris Smith about the set of experiments that resulted in the award on the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Like this podcast? Pl...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/sir-john-gurdon-nobel-laureate

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: the steps scientists are taking to make sure the trees we plant today can cope with tomorrow's warmer climate; tracking gannets to find out how environmenta...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/future-proofing-forests-noisy-gannets-antarctica

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why accurately forecasting solar storms is becoming increasingly important; and how understanding how fish shoal could interest economists. Like this podcas...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/forecasting-solar-storms-fish-personalities

This month, discover how seeing red can help restore works of art and probe the origins of cancer. We delve into the world of Infra-red spectroscopy to reveal the creation and preservation of anc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/entering-infra-red-zone

In the final of our special series of programmes from the British Science Festival, we find out how researchers will be drilling through over 3 kilometres of ice to find out what's hiding in subg...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bsf-2012-subglacial-lakes-food-brain

In this special edition of the Naked Scientists from the British Science Festival, we get the latest news from the Large Hadron Collider, including their scientific shopping list, and find out ho...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bsf-2012-finding-higgs-and-mining-heat

In the second special programme from the British Science Festival in Aberdeen, we discover the technology for seeing through your clothes and find out why "Lonely heart" teenage water voles can s...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bsf-2012-seeing-through-clothes-and-water-voles

With 40% of adults in the UK now using smartphones, and similar figures worldwide, we discover how easy it is to track and profile peoples' movements using information given away in public by the...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/monitoring-your-mobile-phone

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: what the first creatures to walk on land looked like; the connection between the biodiversity of upland rivers and the ecosystem services they provide; and ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/early-tetrapods-upland-rivers-north-anatolian-fault

In this, the first of a series of special podcasts from the British Science Festival, we discover the Wang Particle, find out how technology can help people stay more able until later in life, an...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/bsf-2012-caring-technology-and-colourful-fossils

Satellites are essential, and not just for the latest television. Nation states rely on satellites for reconnaissance, navigation and secure communications. But satellites are under threat, from ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/saving-satellites

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: sex and the survival of honey bee colonies; why rivers are still recovering from the legacy of acid rain; and collecting coral from the Atlantic seabed. Lik...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/bees-and-sex-acid-rains-legacy-cold-water-corals

NASA's David Blake from the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover team and the Open University's Cassini-Huygens space probe pioneer John Zarnecki answer your questions about planetary ex...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mars-curiosity-extra

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how dairy farming in Africa 7000 years ago led to the speedy evolution of the gene that lets us digest milk; and how climate change could be having a detrim...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/early-african-dairy-farming-seabird-migrations

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how browner drinking water presents problems for the water companies; the effect of street lighting on bats and their commuter routes; and how ultraviolet l...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/brown-water-bats-and-streetlights-plant-methane

Find out about the exciting new technologies that are revolutionising neuroscience, providing scientists with the tools to unlock the mysteries of the mind and nervous system and paving the way f...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-neuroscience/exciting-new-technologies-are-revolutionising-neuroscience

We find out what happens when your immune system attacks the brain, how a protein providing the architecture of brain connectivity may help to treat people with autism, explore how scientists are...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-neuroscience/naked-scientists-unravel-connections-your-brain

The Naked Scientists strip down the brain in Spain - attending the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference in Barcelona. We find out how your brain computes information, ask if w...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-neuroscience/naked-scientists-strip-down-brain-spain

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at how urban heat islands will alter under climate change, and how these changes might affect your health, as well as our railways, roads and energy ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/urban-heat-ancient-cave-art-bold-birds

This month, we get materialistic to discover how X-rays are being used to improve light emitting diodes , how probing piezoelectric materials could provide a less toxic future and how solar cells...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/making-material-world

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how knowing exactly which bees pollinate which crops may help us grow food more sustainably; and a look at the effects of tiny particles called nanomaterial...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/bees-nanomaterials-and-methane-mars

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: a look at how technology designed to measure air pollution may soon be used to smell disease on a patient's breath; and the steps British researchers are ta...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/medical-diagnostics-value-nature

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - scientists describe why the planet's least understood but most diverse species of coral is under threat. Also, what the meteorite strike that wiped the din...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/cold-water-corals-meteorites-new-greenhouse-gases

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: researchers explain why, despite record rainfall, England is in drought. Later, how scientists are using indoor avalanches to figure out where to put buildi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/drought-and-record-rainfall-indoor-avalanches

This month, Professor John Duncan explores human intelligence and the neurons and circuits in the brain that enable us to have the thoughts, cognition and problem-solving abilities that set us ap...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/how-intelligence-happens

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - we take a closer look at tiny marine plants, which underpin the entire marine food chain and play a vital role in the Earth's climate. Also, how scientists...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/microscopic-plants-using-volcanic-ash-dating

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how fungal infections could threaten our food security as well as the planet's amphibians; work under way to understand the ecosystems around the hydrotherm...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/fungal-threats-hydrothermal-vents-green-buildings

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, Richard Hollingham hears about new air-quality monitoring that could help mitigate the effects of bad-air days; the effect of climate change on Mediterranea...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/air-pollution-dwarf-elephants-and-water-footprints

This month, we celebrate ten years of Diamond and discover what it takes to get from green field site to functioning synchrotron. We take a look at the wide range of science that's taken place fr...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/ten-years-diamond

Cambridge Neuroscientists Dr Michael Hastings and Dr Akhilesh Reddy spoke at the annual Cambridge Neuroscience Seminar about their work on sleep.They discuss the importance of sleep for learning ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/what-happens-when-we-screw-our-sleep-patterns

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Hollingham finds out why the American signal crayfish is driving out one of the UK's native species; in our latest audio diary, Hannah Grist from th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/invasive-signal-crayfish-shags-night-shining-clouds

Marine biologist Dr Joshua Drew from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago is using cutting edge communication technologies to bring the oceans alive in two very different parts of the p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/global-classroom-brings-oceans-alive

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, Sue Nelson goes to the River Thames in central London to find out why nitrate pollution has trebled since the 1930s. Later on, she talks to a researcher abo...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/river-thames-pollution-arctic-freshwater-bulge

What's your sense of direction like? And how good are you at reading a map? It turns out, these skills are down to two particular regions of the brain that keep track of where you are in relation...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/mental-maps-brain

This Month, Dr Hannah Critchlow opens up the mind to reveal the neurons controlling the inner workings of our brain and how we perceive the world around us... Like this podcast? Please help us by...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/cambridge-cafe-scientifique-opening-your-mind

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Sue Nelson visits RAL Space at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire to find out how scientists check if the scientific equipment they put on sa...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/testing-satellites-earth-hedgerow-wildlife

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Richard Hollingham goes to the River Wandle in south-west London to find out how scientific research is helping to revitalise this heavily-used river; late...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/revitalising-urban-rivers-hot-conservation-topics

This month, we step inside to explore what, and who, it takes to run the synchrotron. We meet the people that keep the electrons accelerating to produce light beams 100 billion times brighter tha...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/day-day-diamond

It's not often that science news goes viral, but when researchers dubbed a new species the 'Hoff Crab' more people than usual seemed to take notice! Like this podcast? Please help us by supportin...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/hoff-crab-north-sea-fisheries-flood-prediction

Deep sea researchers Doug Connelly and Jon Copley led the team that discovered the deepest and possibly hottest undersea volcanoes on the planet. In a special edition of the Naked Scientists they...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/discovering-worlds-deepest-deep-sea-vents

This month, Dr Lora Heisler discusses the brain mechanisms controlling our appetite and subsequent body weight. She explores the many drivers behind hunger and appetite control and how these diff...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/brain-control-appetite-and-body-weight

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Sue Nelson goes to Birmingham to find out how the James Bond film Casino Royale and orang-utan conservation are linked; later she meets a scientist from th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/parkour-and-orang-utans-risks-solar-storms

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Sue Nelson goes to the Thames Barrier to find out how engineers use science to decide whether or not to raise or lower it, helping to stop storm surges fro...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/thames-barrier-colour-prehistoric-birds

This month, we celebrate the international year of chemistry by exploring the wide range of chemical discoveries and research taking place at Diamond. We investigate the role of chemistry in pitt...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/chemistry-synchrotron

How does nicotine open a gateway to cocaine addiction? A new study indicates that nicotine primes the brain for cocaine - by altering the structure of a gene linked to learning, memory and addict...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-nicotine-switches-brain-cocaine

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Richard Hollingham talks to one of the scientists behind the discovery of the ozone hole to find why it's still there; how research on starlings on an isla...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/ozone-hole-starlings-fair-isle-forest-fires

Professor Tony Holland provides a window into the biology of behaviour and how genetic syndromes are helping open this window to provide greater levels of insight into violent behaviour, appetite...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/biology-behaviour

In this infectious special podcast, we explore the science behind Stephen Soderburgh's latest film, Contagion, which depicts the series of events that unfold with the outbreak of a new strain of ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/contagion-special

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - Sue Nelson visits the largest collection of venomous snakes in the UK to find out how researchers are developing antivenoms to help African snakebite victi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/treating-snakebites-and-european-shags

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Richard Hollingham meets scientists and archaeologists who are working to preserve one of the most important Neanderthal settlements in north-west Europe to...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/neanderthal-mammoth-hunters-jersey

In this final podcast from the BSGT Conference we hear how genes could be targeted to develop a new drug for HIV as well as long awaited treatments for Muscular dystrophies and Haemophilia. We al...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/bsgt/hiv-haemophilia-and-muscular-dystophies

Today we hear how cancers, retinal degeneration, spinal chord injury and liver disease can all be targeted using gene and stem cell therapy techniques. We also explore a variety of methods to del...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/bsgt/cancer-and-ocular-gene-therapies

In today's podcast we hear how gene therapy can be used to target a variety of respiratory disorders such as Cystic Fibrosis and how scientists are trying to grow organs such as lungs in the lab....

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/bsgt/respiratory-disorders-and-muscular-dystrophies

In this first podcast from the 2011 BSGT/ESGCT Conference in Brighton we bring you the highlights from the Public Engagment day including an introduction to gene therapy and stem cell therapy, li...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/bsgt/public-engagement-gene-therapy

Dr. Linda Sharples gives an insight into the workings of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and how new medical treatments, drugs and procedures are analysed and assessed f...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/cambridge-cafe-scientifique-nhs-rationing

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - how scientists find out about life in the oceans' deepest trenches; how identifying proteins from 50 milion year old reptile skin could help us store radio...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/deep-sea-ancient-proteins-arctic-research

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how hikers and walkers could be unwittingly changing the landscape by spreading alien species; what it's like to work as a marine biologist in the Arctic in...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/spreading-aliens-arctic-experience-and-antarctica

This month we look into the light to discover how Diamond's new Imaging and Coherance beamline is helping scientists see with greater clarity than ever before! We hear how the beamline works to p...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/looking-light

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: in a geoengineering special edition, we take a closer look at some of the technologies we may have to resort to using to avert dangerous climate change. Lik...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/engineering-climate-tackle-climate-change

Reader in evolution at Wits University, Lee Berger, made a life-changing discovery when he uncovered the remains of a new species of hominid, Australopithecus sediba, in South Africa. Here, Chris...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/australopithecus-sediba-special

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, why scientists are working with the National Trust to restore the chalk grasslands around Stonehenge; how researchers are using satellites to study microsco...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/stonehenge-microscopic-plants-and-baboons

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how scientists are using fish scales to figure out why the UK salmon population is falling; and how carbon dioxide emissions from power stations could be us...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/where-do-all-salmon-go-and-making-co2-bricks

A species of tropical vine attracts its bat pollinators using acoustic signals, rather than bright colours or smells, according to a study published in the journal Science this week. In this spec...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/how-plants-attract-bats

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: why scientists are planning on drilling three kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet in one of the most ambitious exploration projects ever undertaken; ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/searching-life-lake-ellsworth

This week, why understanding rip currents at Perranporth in north Cornwall could help save lives; how exactly does carbon capture and storage (CCS) work and how can scientists be sure that carbon...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/rip-currents-and-carbon-capture

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, why weathermen are using a converted World War II bunker to monitor clouds; how thug species such as bramble, nettle and bracken can be just as damaging to ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/wwii-bunkers-thugs-and-aliens-and-calving-glaciers

This month, we venture into the synchrotron along with members of the public to bring you a glimpse of the Inside Diamond open days. We meet the engineers and technicians that design the componen...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/inside-diamond

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - what UK farmers are doing to protect the country's vanishing bumblebees, butterflies and other pollinating insects; how scientists are trying to figure out...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/bumblebee-declines-microbes-and-amazing-birds

Professor Jenny Morton provides new insight into the cognitive abilities of the supposedly dim-witted sheep and explains how these quick learning animals can be used to model Huntington's Disease...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/learning-about-sheep-learning

Anything in the deep sea, whether that's the microbes that live down there, or the research vehicles sent down to take samples of them face the same challenges from being way down deep. So why st...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pressures-deep-sea

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - the cunning tricks the cuckoo uses to get another bird to do the parenting, why researchers are studying snow in Sweden, and how an improved radiocarbon da...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/cuckoos-wicken-fen-snow-and-radiocarbon-dating

One of the biggest problems when it comes to caring for the ocean realm is that it is out of sight and out of mind. It's hard to care about something you don't know about, and most people, most o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/picturing-underwater-world

How do marine animals hear, see, touch, and smell the world around them? Life underwater is obviously very different to life on land and it can be difficult for us air-breathing humans to imagine...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/taking-lobsters-view-oceans

The saying goes that we known more about the surface of the moon than we do about the deep sea - and that's probably true. But modern technologies are opening up the mysterious depths allowing sc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/exploring-wonders-deep

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, why removing some man-made coastal flood defences might not be such a harebrained idea, what it's like studying gas exchange in the wilds of the Southern Oc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/flood-defences-southern-ocean-and-whiter-clouds

This month, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen explores human empathy and explains what empathy is, how it differs amongst the population and the neurological and environmental causes of these differenc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/cambridge-cafe-scientifique-zero-degrees-empathy

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how a specially-designed twin turboprop research plane is helping scientists in a huge range of subjects from archaeology to ecology, and why a violent spac...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/science-plane-and-forecasting-space-storms

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast, how last year's eruption of the Eyjafjallajkull volcano in Iceland gave scientists an unparalleled opportunity for research, and why sediment from rivers li...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/volcanic-ash-and-sediment-time-machines

This month we attract your attention to the power of magnetism as we explore just what magnetism is and how it can be induced. We also explore the role of magnetism in superconductors, as well as...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/power-magnetism

Traditionally viewed as a poor verbal practise, the ums and ers uttered by parents may in fact play a critical role in helping toddlers to learn new words, as Rochester University researcher Rich...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/um-how-toddlers-learn-language

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how scientists plan to measure the Earth's magnetic field from space, why one researcher is in the frozen town of Churchill in northern Canada, and how the ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/earths-magnetic-field-snow-and-chernobyl

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how the famous White Cliffs of Dover could be made of fish poo (at least partially), why one researcher is so interested in dead whales, and why the Japan e...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/fish-poo-dead-whales-and-japan-earthquake

Coral reefs are vibrant ecosystems packed with spectacular underwater life that protect coastlines and provide food and income for millions of people. But coral reefs are at risk. How threatened ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/reefs-risk-revisited

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how carbon capture and storage works and why it's here to stay, the effect of floodplains on water pollution, and how exactly do you measure the thickness o...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/carbon-capture-and-storage-floods-cryosat-2

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: how tracking insects can help scientists forecast summer storms and floods, and the role one of Europe's key satellite missions played in the recent floods ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/tracking-insects-big-dish-australian-floods

For this month's Cafe, Graham Fraser, from the Medical Research Council, discusses the prevalence and causes of Alzheimers disease as well is his research on the disease and the possible methods ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/cafe-scientifique/alzheimers-mind

Fewer than one third of patients who suffer a heart attack attend rehabilitation sessions, despite evidence that this follow-up support can be vital in reducing the risk of further heart attacks ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/smart-way-rehab

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast - how the Romans recycled glass, dinosaur colour, and what Europe's gravity mission tells us about ocean currents. Did you know that the height of the world'...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/romans-recycling-dinosaur-colour-gravity-mission

How do you go about finding a mate if you can't go and look for one? This is the problem corals, which are rooted to the seabed, have found a spectacular way to solve - mass spawning. But how do ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/spectacular-synchronous-coral-spawning

What does the future hold for us? Is the future bright, shining and brimming with opportunity, or a dark, dystopian drudgery? Recent scientific advances suggest there may be much to look forward ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/optimists-tour-future

This month we look back at Diamond's scientific highlights of 2010 to reveal how microbes are eroding away our coastline and how metal organic frameworks could help find the holy grail of chemist...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/archive/diamond/eroding-coastlines-and-holy-grails-look-back-2010

In this latest watery-themed Planet Earth Podcast, Richard Hollingham hears how the underwater world isn't the soundless place you might imagine. From chirping, gurgling and snapping sounds from ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/noisy-coral-reefs-melting-ice-sheets-and-whale-speak

As the UK winter continues to bite, Sue Nelson tries to escape it all by going to visit a coral reef. Unfortunately for Sue, the coral reef is not in some sunny clime. Instead, it's an indoor cor...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/essex-coral-reefs-malaria-uk-and-antarctica

This is a special edition of the Planet Earth podcast, featuring some of our favourite audio diaries from the past year. We've got scientists using cannons to study geese in Ireland, researchers ...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/audio-diary-special-edition

In this special episode of the Naked Scientists podcast, we explore the world of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES), a technology allowing people paralysed from the waist down to row and cyc...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/back-saddle-getting-paralysed-people-riding-and-rowing

Dark gamma ray bursts have puzzled astronomers for over a decade. The energetic gamma ray events, known as Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), all have an afterglow visible in the X-ray part of the spectrum...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/light-shed-dark-grbs

In this podcast from National Pathology Week 2010, we join Dr Alun Williams at the Natural History Museum to discover the importance of veterinary pathology. With some incredible examples from th...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/animal-pathology-national-pathology-week-2010

Red squirrels used to be the most common squirrel in Britain. But since the grey squirrel was introduced from the USA as an illegal immigrant in the late 1800s, their numbers have nose-dived. Thi...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/red-squirrels-and-tropical-antarctica

We explore the role of pathologists in pregnancy and childbirth in this podcast from National Pathology Week 2010. We discover what we can learn from an ultrasound as well as other tests that can...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/pathologists-pregnancy-national-pathology-week-2010

In this podcast Richard Hollingham reports from an unusual and somewhat cold location - onboard the British Antarctic Survey's RRS James Clark Ross which was stuck in the ice for two weeks 1000 k...

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/short/planet-earth/arctic-expedition-special