Naked Scientists, In Short Special Editions Podcast
963 episodes - English - Latest episode: 18 days ago - ★★★★★ - 40 ratingsProbing the weird, wacky and spectacular, the Naked Scientists Special Editions are special one-off scientific reports, investigations and interviews on cutting-edge topics by the Naked Scientists team.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
The proteins responsible for feeling cold revealed...
April 02, 2024 02:14 - 4 minutes - 4.1 MBA 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 identified the protein GluK2 acts as a sensor in our bodies for cold temperatures, and Sannia Farrukh has been finding out more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Apes reveal language origins, and being dyslexic in science
March 08, 2024 11:00 - 36 minutes - 33 MBThis 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 in science, and new insights into the songs whales sing underwater... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Making waves about coastline conservation, and plastic waste
February 14, 2024 07:44 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBThis 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 nature, the promise of pharmacogenomics and personalised medicine, the plastic pollution problem and how to tackle it, and why water management in the face of a changing climate needs more than just a single solution. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Bees can't taste pesticides, and how albatrosses get aloft
November 30, 2023 10:36 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBIn 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 signals, how plants make a comeback when ice sheets retreat, and how the world's biggest bird uses wind and waves to good effect to minimise the costs of takeoff... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Recycled plastics pollute food, and the value of water
November 10, 2023 11:08 - 37 minutes - 34.3 MBBetter 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 utensils, how we can help humans to step up in extreme environments, and the opportunity offered by "lived experience" when it comes to mental health all go under the microscope in this episode of the Cambridge Prisms Podcast. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Wildlife Trade Extinctions and 21st Century Psychology
October 20, 2023 07:31 - 37 minutes - 34.3 MBThis 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 mental health services, what art can do for science and conservation of coastal habitats, and the role of epigenetics in medicine... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Surviving a fusion bomb
August 11, 2023 01:10 - 7 minutes - 6.73 MBKen 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 Scientists
Does our language affect our decision making?
February 23, 2023 04:04 - 5 minutes - 4.96 MBThere 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 a part in our willingness to wait for a reward. Researchers gave the choice of having an amount of money now, or a slightly greater amount later. But they put this choice to bilingual speakers, once in each language. So did the language in which the decision was put to these people affect their decis...
Microbial life deep underground
February 06, 2023 02:12 - 5 minutes - 5.37 MBComparatively, 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 beneath us, in the rocks underground. Scientists estimate that 20% of the earth's biomass (that's the combined weight of all living things) are beneath our feet - microbes adapted to the extreme temperature and pressure down there. Geologists, like Andy Mitchell from the University of Aberystwyth, are dete...
How the pandemic affected child development
October 21, 2022 03:36 - 4 minutes - 3.76 MBBabies 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 previous years. The reason, as the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland's Susan Byrne explains to Risa Bagwandin, is that social isolation and face masks made it harder for developing youngsters to explore, socialise and interact in the key ways that help foster their communication skills... Like this pod...
New Ultrasound Technique for Breast Imaging
September 30, 2022 06:06 - 3 minutes - 3.04 MBA 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 young women, is difficult to image using existing techniques. Now scientists at the National Physical Laboratory have developed a new technique , using ultrasound. Risa Bagwandin spoke to senior research scientist, Daniel Sarno... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Search and rescue rats
June 15, 2022 10:37 - 4 minutes - 4.32 MBApopo 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 trained these much shunned rodents to sniff out unexploded landmines left over from wars in countries like Mozambique. More recently, their keen sense of smell has also enabled trainers to develop them into excellent detectors of Tuberculosis carriers, so that patients can get diagnosed more quickly th...
TV is influencing careers
June 07, 2022 02:02 - 4 minutes - 4.03 MBDid 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. Shrikanth Narayanan and colleagues from the University of Southern California created a dataset to analyse 4000 professions in the subtitles of over 136,000 movies and TV shows and found that their representation may have influenced some of us to take up a career we loved watching on screen... Like this p...
FIFA Fall Out with EA
May 17, 2022 03:23 - 2 minutes - 2.49 MBThere'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 Berrow, from the Naked Gaming Podcast, has been finding out why and what the consequences might be... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Did the lockdown make us more creative?
May 17, 2022 02:07 - 4 minutes - 4.06 MBNow, 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 survey conducted by the Paris Brain Institute to learn more about the effects of the pandemic on creativity, you decided to sharpen your culinary skills, or spent more time pottering in the garden. But what can this uptick in artistic endeavours in such strange circumstances tell us about the way we r...
Dog and Dingo DNA sequences
April 29, 2022 08:08 - 6 minutes - 5.94 MBDingoes 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 fossil dingo remains go back only a few thousand years. So what is the relationship between dogs and dingoes, and the wolves they're both related to? Speaking with Chris Smith, Latrobe University's Bill Ballard got into this debate under slightly unusual circumstances... Like this podcast? Please help ...
Coffee without the coffee beans
April 28, 2022 02:12 - 4 minutes - 3.83 MBCoffee 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 to Charlie Shaw from Atomo coffee to find out how they've been making our favourite beverage, without the use of coffee beans... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Recreating smells from the past
April 07, 2022 10:06 - 5 minutes - 4.6 MBIf 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 chop. Scientists in Germany think we're under appreciative of smell in our evolution as a species, with new research from the Max Planck Institute exploring biomolecular methods to bring smells from the past back to life. James Tytko spoke with Barbara Huber... Like this podcast? Please help us by su...
A new method for recycling plastics
April 04, 2022 11:05 - 4 minutes - 4.2 MBThe 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 down naturally and are very hard to recycle. But Athina Anastasaki, from ETH Zurich, has set herself the goal of making plastics that can be recycled more easily and now she thinks getting close. Chris Smith found out more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Data storage in DNA
March 24, 2022 02:03 - 4 minutes - 4.39 MBResearchers 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 can store data 100 times more densely compared to a computer hard drive. In order to capitalise on DNA as a data storage platform, modifications to the molecules that make up DNA are currently being studied. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Solving puzzles to help cancer research
March 23, 2022 11:24 - 5 minutes - 5.26 MBPlaying 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 mobile and caught up with Marc Marti-Renom; he's part of a team at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, where they've built a game for your phone that will help contribute to cancer research... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Pig grunts indicate their emotions
March 17, 2022 10:03 - 4 minutes - 3.89 MBThere 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-Briefer, from the University of Copenhagen, has assembled a vast dataset of pig noises. And by correlating the noises the animals produced in response to positive or negative experiences, she can pin emotions on sounds. Julia Ravey got in touch to find out if the research team responsible are completel...
Indoor pollution from cleaning
March 11, 2022 02:25 - 4 minutes - 4.36 MBResearchers 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 as indoor pollutants. Evelyna Wang speaks to Phillip Stevens about this discovery... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
The Dangers of Nuclear Weapons
March 10, 2022 02:50 - 3 minutes - 3.64 MBNuclear 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
Creating Oxygen on the Moon
March 02, 2022 10:57 - 4 minutes - 4.39 MBAs 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 such as ice. A team of researchers including Mark Symes, from the University of Glasgow and the European Space Agency, have been studying the effects of low gravity environments on oxygen production... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Roman faeces housing fossilised parasites
March 01, 2022 09:57 - 2 minutes - 2.34 MBWashing 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 Rabinow, to tell us more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Blood clot tests with smartphones
February 28, 2022 10:51 - 4 minutes - 3.68 MBBlood 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 is required for those suffering theses conditions as well as constant blood clot monitoring. A team from the University of Washington, including Justin Chan, has developed a method to take blood clot tests at home, using only a smartphone and a small drop of blood... Like this podcast? Please help us...
Shades of Blue Stop a Mosquito Biting You
February 25, 2022 10:21 - 5 minutes - 4.59 MBHave 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. Anoushka Handa spoke to Jeff Riffell to find out more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Magnetic Fields Guide Migratory Birds
February 23, 2022 04:43 - 3 minutes - 3.5 MBThere'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, like reed warblers, manage to find their way, seemingly unerringly, half way around the planet. But it's more subtle than just using the magnetic field like a compass. What Oxford University's Joe Wynn thinks is happening is that the birds are pre-programmed by their upbringing to fly in a certain dire...
Car Dependence in Greenfield Housing
February 17, 2022 12:54 - 5 minutes - 4.91 MBGreenfield 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 report by Transport for New Homes has found that these developments are offsetting their positive contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions because of a lack of planning around sustainable modes of transport. James Tytko went to see for himself... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the...
Why don't plants freeze to death in Winter?
February 14, 2022 11:39 - 4 minutes - 4.14 MBKrzysztof 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 question. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Black hole seen forming new stars
February 09, 2022 12:26 - 3 minutes - 3.53 MBBlack 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 Telescope, researchers at Montana State University have seen a massive black hole at the centre of a small galaxy called Henize 2-10 triggering star formation around it. Robert Spencer spoke to Zachary Schutte to find out more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Trees for the Jubilee
February 06, 2022 09:20 - 23 minutes - 21.9 MBPlanting 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. Robert Spencer and Anoushka Handa take a dive into the science of trees to find out more about these fantastic plants and to discover what they can do around Cambridge to help... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Game of Life still revealing secrets
February 03, 2022 10:25 - 4 minutes - 4.19 MBMathematicians 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, these automata often show quite complex behaviour. Now, though, we are starting to find out more about situations when these systems aren't quite so dynamic. Robert Spencer has more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Organising our memories
February 02, 2022 01:21 - 4 minutes - 4.53 MBMemories 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 this time last week you were listening to our show... or at least we hope so! New research has shown that the human brain contains time cells to understand when an event has occurred. Anoushka spoke with Dr. Leila Reddy from the French National Center for Scientific Research... Like this podcast? Pleas...
Automating Blood Smears
February 01, 2022 02:18 - 4 minutes - 4.53 MBBlood 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 process and the quality of the blood smears. Julia Ravey talks to Samuel McDermott... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Making new year's resolutions SMART
January 28, 2022 12:53 - 4 minutes - 4.17 MBIt'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 support from friends and family. Tricia Smith asked sport psychologist Helen Davis whether there was a smarter way to go about achieving her goal to "get fit" in 2022... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Ichthyosaur found in Rutland
January 27, 2022 10:50 - 6 minutes - 5.78 MBThe 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 Survey and Emily Swaby from The Open University describe the significance of finding the skeletal remains of this marine reptile to Harry Lewis... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
The Reforestation Re-evaluation
January 26, 2022 11:43 - 4 minutes - 3.69 MBTropical 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 their natural way? Research published in the journal Science gives a message of hope, explaining how forests are able to recover to their original state on a much faster time-scale than first thought. Katie King spoke to lead author, Loorens Poorter, to find out more. Like this podcast? Please help us by ...
Sleep and Alzheimer's
January 24, 2022 01:08 - 6 minutes - 5.98 MBChanging 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 as senile dementia. They occur when brain cells are lost, progressively robbing us of our mental faculties. In Alzheimer's Disease it's caused by a buildup of a toxic chemical called a-beta; also known as beta amyloid. This naturally accumulates during the day and gets flushed out during a restful nig...
Do Asteroids Pose a Real Threat?
January 19, 2022 12:02 - 4 minutes - 4.34 MBKatie 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 found, and what methods are being trialled to prevent any potential collisions... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Listening vs hearing
January 13, 2022 10:50 - 4 minutes - 4.16 MBHearing 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. New research published in Cell Reports describes how brain activity varies during listening and hearing and how this work sheds light on neural pathways linked to attention. Katie King spoke with author Tania Barkat to find out the difference between hearing and listening... Like this podcast? Please he...
Language and the Brain
January 12, 2022 10:46 - 6 minutes - 5.73 MBUnderstanding 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, neuroscience isn't able to tell us the underlying computations that lead to human language. New research from the US has taken an interesting approach to working this out: instead of just studying how real, human intelligence deals with language, these researchers have been looking at how artificial intelligence...
What is the impact of a black hole?
January 10, 2022 11:01 - 4 minutes - 3.94 MBAstronomers 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 matter contained within them that it cannot escape the black hole's pull. Scientists using the LOFAR telescope in the Netherlands have been studying the impact that such black holes have on the Universe on a mind-bogglingly large scale. One of the scientists working on the project, Marisa Brienza from ...
IVF embryos are more successful than expected
January 07, 2022 01:19 - 3 minutes - 3.28 MBDuring 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 successful pregnancy. Previously, embryologists would pick out and use only what they judged to be the most promising looking embryos. But now new research from the reproductive genetics company, Igenomix, has found that a large proportion of embryos that were previously being overlooked can in fact ...
Making antibiotics more effective
January 04, 2022 10:12 - 5 minutes - 4.85 MBWhile 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 ways to counteract resistance is by developing drugs that make current antibiotics more effective, and new research published by the University of Oxford reveals some promising candidates. Tricia Smith spoke with John Tregoning, a researcher in infectious diseases, but not affiliated with this partic...
Omicron update: what's in store for Australia
December 19, 2021 06:55 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBDr 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 decisions confronting politicians and policymakers internationally and how they should react to the omicron new variant, which appears super transmissible but potentially a lot less lethal than other existing forms of SARS-CoV-2... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
The recent evolution of human beings
December 16, 2021 02:59 - 4 minutes - 3.85 MBUs 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 complex traits have continued to be tweaked, even in the past two to three thousand years. Julia Ravey spoke to Guan Ning Lin about our ancestors and how alike we really are. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
100 years of insulin
December 15, 2021 12:47 - 5 minutes - 4.67 MB2021 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 produce enough insulin or doesn't respond properly to insulin. In the UK, 1 in 15 people are affected, and that's only set to rise as more and more of us are overweight or obese. So what is insulin, how was it discovered, and how have we reached a place where millions of people can safely inject themselve...
Cooling down rapidly warming cities
December 14, 2021 09:39 - 5 minutes - 4.58 MBMore 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 flooding that hit the London underground - and Queen guitarist Brian May's basement - in the summer of 2021. A key reason for this might be that the urban environments themselves are exacerbating the heating effect, as Verner Viisainen heard from Iain Campbell, from the organisation RMI and the lead au...