Naked Scientists Special Editions ENHANCED: Recent Episodes
The Naked Scientists
Probing 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.
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 was tied to a rock where an eagle would eat his liver every day, but overnight it would regenerate and grow back, allowing his punishment to continue day after day. Now, in real life, the liver doesn't regenerate quite that quickly, but it is true that it has the ability to grow back and heal itself remarkably well. Georgia Mills spoke to liver scientist Auinash Kalsotra from the University of Illinois, about how and why the liver has this incredible skill.
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 emergent and self-organised way, relying on just local interactions between individuals. In contrast, human designed technology is usually created by an external builder. But now, a team of roboticists and biologists have come together to design robot swarms that can self-organise into complex shapes. Hannah Laeverenz Schologelhofer spoke with Sabine Hauert from the Bristol Robotics Lab.
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 the cells of the cervix to keeping growing excessively, which eventually damages their DNA, causing cancer. Testing for this cancer can be challenging: these days it involves using DNA tests to look for traces of the virus in a sample. But the viruses are very common, and only a small proportion of people carrying them will actually get cancer; so there are lots of false positives. Now researchers at Queen Mary University of London have found a way to tell who really is at risk, by pinpointing changes to a pattern of chemical markers, called epigenetic marks, that are present on our DNA. A person at risk of cancer develops characteristic changes to these marks, which study author Attila Lorincz can pick out, as he explained to Georgia Mills...
In this episode of the eLife Podcast, the nerves with a taste for salt, why fur seal pups succumb to hookworms, the oldest fossilised flowers ever found, the monkey business of chimp personalities, and the 11 million year old flying squirrel foung in a rubbish tip...
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 this Christmas? Georgia Mills is here to spoil all of the festive fun...
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 University, Toronto, and MIT, there might be a way to do this much more cheaply in future. Hannah Laeverenz Schlogelhofer spoke with York researcher Thomas Cooper, about this new way of using sunlight to clean up water and produce superheated steam.
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 result of these small changes at the single cell level. But a cell is a complex system, and some of the important molecules inside a cell exist in very small quantities that can be difficult to detect. To address this challenge, a new tool has been developed called 'nano-tweezers'. These tiny devices can extract individual molecules from inside cells. Hannah Laeverenz Schlogelhofer spoke with Joshua Edel from Imperial College London about these 'nano-tweezers'.
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? And if your child is doing well with language as a toddler, will they still be doing well as a teenager? Recently, results have come out from a study 15 years in the making and Katie Haylor spoke to one of the authors, Rebecca Pearson from the University of Bristol.
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 Baymax. Doughy and malleable, a robot like Baymax is kind of the holy grail for scientists who are working on making Soft Robots - robots which aren't made of metal or plastic but instead of stretchable, supple materials like rubber, gels, or fabric. Eva Higginbotham spoke to Ilse Van Meerbeek, a PhD student at Cornell University who recently published a paper in Science Robotics about new progress in this field.
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 their study published September 2018, they looked to poison bacteria using the heavy metal gallium, to improve the lives of those with cystic fibrosis. In October 2018, Adam Murphy spoke to two authors of the study. First, Christopher Goss and then colleague, Pradeep Singh
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 make millions more malaria parasites in that infected individual, and makes them sicker in the process; or, it produces a different form of the parasite that's sexually active and specialised to infect mosquitoes so it can spread to another human. And this week scientists in Edinburgh have discovered that malaria bases the decision on whether to boost its numbers in an infected person, or to try to spread to other individuals, by counting its own population. Understanding how this works, they think, might provide us with new ways to tackle the problem. Petra Schneider told Chris Smith what she's found...
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 that we should wear sunscreen when out and about in the summer to protect our skin and so reduce our risk of skin cancer, but new research from the Weill Medical College of Cornell might allow us to ditch the sunscreen at some point in the future. Eva Higginbotham spoke to Dr Jonathan Zippin, a dermatologist and skin researcher, about his lab's key discovery in the science of skin.
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 actually also have a special type of immune cell sitting in some of our body surfaces, like our skin and our gut, and new research suggests that these cells might hold the key to future cancer and allergy treatments. Eva Higginbotham spoke to Professor Adrian Hayday from the Francis Crick Institute and King's College London, about his new paper describing the unique way these cells actually work, and why they might be an important player in the fight against certain diseases.
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 from our November 2018 QnA. Roger got in touch to ask whether artificial intelligence will be making medicines in the future, and we also heard from Sean about some rather intelligent ravens...
The wildlife impact of urban sprawl, how climate change will affect the distribution of mosquito-borne outbreaks, Devil Facial Tumour Disease 2, how LSD works in the brain and gender bias in peer review all go under the microscope in this latest episode of the eLife Podcast.
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 defying our ability to treat them. Ironically, this meant WW1 actually lead to huge advances in medicine, and neuroscience. But, thanks to a charity, Headway, it's also helping people with brain injuries today. Georgia Mills has been finding out how
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 University has been sequencing genes to understand which ones are switched on by the tumours. To learn more, Adam Murphy spoke to Charles Danko, of the Baker Institute for Animal Health and the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine...
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 reaction called inflammation in areas around the teeth, potentially destroying tissue and bone and causing tooth loss. But quite why an altered microbiome causes this inflammation isn't known, so there are no targeted treatments, and surgery is the main option for severe cases. But now scientists have spotted that periodontitis patients have higher numbers of immune cells called TH17 cells in their mouths, and by targeting these cells, they managed to slow down the progression of the disease in mice. Katie Haylor spoke with Niki Moutsopoulos from the National Institute of Dental and Crano-facial Research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
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 nearby supermassive black hole! Dr Martin Krause tells us how we can see them at all...
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 Professor Francois Balloux from University College London to learn about how this infectious disease evolved...
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 including liver disease, pancreatitis, diabetes, heart disease and numerous forms of cancer. Fortunately, it seems that the message to put down the booze has trickled down to the younger generation as a recent study of 16 to 24 year olds shows that over the past ten years, they are drinking less. Tamsin Bell spoke to Linda Ng Fat from University College London to find out why more teens are laying off the drinks...
This special edition of the eLife Podcast marks our 50th episode and we've decided to mark the milestone by focusing on a field that's huge and tiny both at the same time: huge in terms of the rate at which the discipline's growing and the impact it's set to have our lives, and tiny because its subjects are microscopic. It's our microbiome, the community of micro-organisms that live on us and in us and outnumber our own human cells by maybe 50 fold: we're literally passengers in our own bodies, and over the next 30 minutes we'll hear how gut bacteria might alter your risk of diabetes, and how the microbiome can manipulate your mood...
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-investigator in the joint ESA-NASA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, and is involved in several further NASA missions of space exploration. With NASA turning 60 this month, Sam Brown spoke to Professor Coates about the fascinating missions that NASA is involved with, and what they have planned for the future...
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, called a gene drive, to solve the problem. This involves engineering a gene-editing system into the insects that targets and inactivates a gene called dbx - or doublesex - that is needed for the insects to develop normally. Critically though, only female mosquitoes, which are also the ones that bite, are affected by the change. This means that males are left unaffected and can spread the genetic modification through the population; but affected female mosquitoes are unable to reproduce, and within 8 generations, the population crashes to zero. Chris Smith heard how it works from Imperial College's Andrea Crisanti...
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 for that? This is a reality that space engineers and robotic experts are trying to facing every day. Now, researchers from Yale think they've got an answer. They've developed something called "Omniskin" - a sheet of material that can animate everyday objects and turn them into robots. Izzie Clarke spoke to study author Joran Booth.
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! Scientists have been looking for easy to make alternatives, such as a new class of materials called metal organic frameworks or MOFs. As the name suggests, they're made by combining two components: a metal and something called an "organic chain" which contains carbon with some other elements. These can be used to create new materials with exciting properties.The big problem is that scientists have not been able to introduce magnetic properties and electrical conductivity to metal organic frameworks, limiting their application in electronics. Until now. Tamsin Bell spoke with Kasper Pederson from the Technical University of Denmark to find out what they have been doing
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 - I'd love to hear yours, but as our kids are all headed back to school this week, we're trying to find out if perhaps these mistakes are good for us! Georgia Mills is on the case, but only after finding out some of our listeners biggest dunce moments!
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 published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B has been looking into our other close relatives: bonobo apes. Bizarrely, while they'll gladly share food, woe betide anyone who touches someone else's tools or toys! So what does this say about us? Adam Murphy spoke to Christopher Krupenye, from the University of St. Andrews to learn more.
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. Psychologists from Anglia Ruskin University are hoping to minimise the dangers of using this technology by incorporating audio cues with in-car GPS to forewarn the driver of the lay of the land. Tamsin Bell met with Helen Keyes to hear what's driving their work...
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 animals like dogs and horses could do this, but no-one knew if animals domesticated for food products would be able to. Georgia Mills spoke to lead researcher Alan McElligott to find out how they did it
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 disease, which might also mean they can be treated in a different way. Cambridge University's Sam Behjati suspects that tumours in children form from foetal tissue that has failed to mature properly. And by comparing the genetic instructions operating in normal and cancerous kidney cells from children and adults, he's tracked down evidence to support his theory and found a host of new avenues to explore to treat the disease. Chris Smith heard how...
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 hear all about their work.
In this episode of the eLife Podcast, we hear about the RNA world, bovine TB, lung fibrosis, and why rock pigeons have different wing patterns...
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 scientists couldn't decide exactly where it came from. Was it a precursor to bone? To teeth? New research is suggesting all those old theories may be as dead and buried as the fish fossils, and this exoskeleton is just another way of making bone. Adam Murphy spoke to Joseph Keating of the University of Manchester to learn more...
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 reactions yet to be tried. But doing these tests is very time consuming, laborious and has a low success rate; it's also very susceptible to human failings, like bias and fatigue. To surmount this, University of Glasgow chemist Lee Cronin has invented a robot to test his chemical combinations for him. What's more impressive is that this robot can actually learn. By testing random chemical combinations from an initial set of 18 chemicals, the robot gathered data about chemical reactivity and could predict what other chemical combinations would cause reactions. This helped the robot decide which chemical combinations to test next. Marika Ottman spoke with Lee Cronin to hear how his "Chemputer" came about
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 public health and safe sex campaigns, there are a further 3 to 5 thousand new HIV infections occurring every day, and despite decades of effort, scientists still have not yet managed to develop an effective vaccine. But one very powerful way to prevent infection is for men to be circumcised, which reduces their risk of picking up the virus by up to 80%. So is this a cost effective strategy to halt HIV spread? Marika Ottman spoke with John Stover who's been studying the impact of a circumcision programme in Zimbabwe...
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 be disfiguring, causing a great deal of distress to people suffering from it. There are treatments available for vitiligo - these include topical creams that suppress the immune attack on skin cells, and phototherapy, which uses UV light. However, these treatments are time- and effort-consuming, particularly if large areas of the skin are affected. Another problem is that they only work temporarily - in many patients, the disease returns when the treatment is stopped. Crucially, the disease tends to return in the same patches of skin where it first appeared - prompting a team of researchers to wonder whether this property may lead to an explanation as to how the disease occurs, and even a potential cure. To find out more, I, Isabelle Cochrane spoke to Prof John Harris...
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 other places in the body, potentially leading to tissue death and even limb amputation. But what if it was possible to re-build the blood vessels in the heart or in other areas of the body, to kick-start the circulation and prevent tissues from being starved of oxygen, and dying? This is what Jo Mountford is trying to do at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion service, as she explains to Katie Haylor...
In this episode of the eLife Podcast, signs that trees exchange genes over hundreds of kilometres, how our gut bacteria protect us from plant toxins, and new insights into the placebo effect...
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. And one adaptation, Cambridge University's Stephanie Payne has found, is to alter the relative lengths of the arms. Katie Haylor and Chris Smith found out more...
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, the impact hazard they may pose, and what we can do to protect our planet, families, communities, and future generations from future asteroid impacts. Izzie Clarke spoke to Matt Bothwell and Adrian Currie at the University of Cambridge to learn more...
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 together, forming complex, multi-celled creatures, which then suddenly became much larger. The question is, why? Emily Mitchell studies one of the earliest animals believed to exist, and explained to Marika Ottman why she thinks these creatures got bigger when they did
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 scientists are increasingly realising that injury done to the brain by damaged blood vessels is probably the leading cause of dementia, but it's also the one that we know much less about. It happens when the very small blood vessels deep within the brain become narrowed, stiffened and leaky, which leads to progressive damage to the adjacent brain tissue, although we don't understand how this happens, or whether we can block or reverse it.
Cambridge scientist Alessandra Granata is working on a way to recreate in a dish what goes on in a patient's brain by turning a skin biopsy into stem cells and then converting those into new blood vessels that recapitulate the features of the disease. She spoke to Chris Smith.
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. Therefore, improving diagnosis is an important goal. Adam Murphy spoke with Tom Turmezei from Cambridge University, to learn more about osteoarthritis and his Wellcome Trust funded project which aims to improve diagnosis...
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 this incredible feat of engineering, Isabelle Cochrane spoke to Dr Tom Edwards, the lead author of the study...
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 isn't without risk. Marika Ottman went to the University of Cambridge and spoke with biochemist Jussi Taipale to learn more...
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...
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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 never-before seen species from coral reefs in the deep sea to the ocean's surface. In the spirit of World Ocean's day tomorrow, Marika Ottman spoke with lead author Bart Shepherd to learn more...
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 good results. However, scientists are going one step further, bringing robots into the operating theatre to improve precision, and patient outcomes. The Nuffield Hospital in Cambridge recently brought in one of these robot helpers, and Chris Smith spoke with the director of the hospital, Adrian Connolly...
In this eLife Podcast, echolocation in bats, chemical probes for open science, using aspirin to manage TB meningitis, brain topography, and combining science and parenthood...
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, published in the journal Heart...
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 Spike from Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge to find out what it's all about...
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 volcanologist at the University of East Anglia...
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 of Sports Medecine reports that exercise at work is associated with an increased risk of early death in men. So what's going on? Georgia Mills spoke to study author Pieter Coenen, of VU University in Amsterdam.
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 dying is understanding how and why they do so. Now, scientists from Cambridge University and the University of Toronto have announced a mechanism that explains how neurons die in two diseases, motor neurone disease and a type of dementia called fronto-temporal dementia. Georgia Mills spoke to Cambridge University chemist Michele Vendruscolo. First, Georgia asked, what actually are neurons?
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, this extreme variation in weather is also affecting local wildlife. Georgia Mills went for a stroll along the river Cam with the RSPB's Richard Bradbury to find out more.
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 numbers, pushing the animals to the brink of extinction. Known as "Devil Facial Tumour Disease" - or DFTD - the cancer is spread when an affected animal bites - and literally implants - some of the tumour from its own mouth into the face of another devil. The tumours avoid detection by the immune system by switching off key markers that would normally label the tissue as foreign. Now, by studying the genetics of the tumour tissue, and its response to drug treatments, scientists are beginning to spot drugs that might be capable of blocking the disease. Katie Haylor spoke to Max Stammnitz, who's been studying DFTD at Cambridge University...
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 because the parasite makes an infected human over-produce certain skin odours that are irresistible to a mosquito. Chris Smith spoke to Ailie Robinson, researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the lead author on the new study that's uncovered how this happens
How much of the world's scientific literature now sits in SciHub, we hear why statins might be making diabetes worse, if oxygen did - or didn't - hold back the evolution of multicellular life, the neurological basis of lip-reading, and how the brain can compensate for autism...
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 moment there is no cure, but scientists are trying to find out more about what causes MND and how we might one day treat it. This week, a paper out in Nature Neuroscience describes a new model for MND, which has revealed some unexpected clues about how the disease operates, and may even lead to a target for treatments. Chris Smith spoke to one of the authors Jemeen Sreedheren, from Cambridge University's Babraham Institute Kings College London.
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 possible, returning them to the wild. But what do people bring through? Georgia Mills was shown the Dead Shed, by senior Border Force officer Grant Miller, a horrific stash of animal and plant products that had been confiscated at Heathrow Airport. This content may be upsetting to some people.
In this episode, we hear about disease control in insects, placental development, post-traumatic stress disorder, the mission to create a human cell atlas and how crickets amplify their song...
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 messages being conveyed quickly and faithfully through the brain producing symptoms that can include difficulty with vision, movement, speech, balance and sensation. In recent years scientists have begun to explore the use of stem cells to combat the progression of the disease. As author Stefano Pluchino, from Cambridge University, explained to Chris Smith.
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, who may be able to help.
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 blood count or anaemia. Currently, heavy periods are treated hormonally or surgically, but these options have side effects and can affect fertility. So is there a better treatment? Edinburgh University's Jackie Maybin thinks so.
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 every year, 70% of them children. In recent years the parasite has also become resistant to most of the existing anti-malarial compounds. This new discovery, by researchers at the University of Cambridge, was aided by Eve, an artificially-intelligent 'robot scientist'. Chris Smith was joined by Steve Oliver who was part of the investigation.
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 with underlying health complaints including heart disease, kidney problems and diabetes, as well as pregnant women, the very young and the over 65s are at higher risk of developing a severe infection. To find out how flu spreads and causes disease, and how you can protect yourself, Naked Scientists Connie Orbach and Khalil Thirlaway have been investigating this microbial assailant...
In this episode, we hear about self-esteem, a new genus of extinct horse, the future of biological engineering, tracking mosquitoes with mobile phones, and how a love rival causes salmon to increase their sperm speed...
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 completely life-changing, by making it nearly impossible to work or sleep, and there is no cure. But now, scientists have come up with a way to reduce the severity of symptoms, by stimulating parts of the brain responsible for causing the phantom sounds. Georgia Mills spoke to Susan Shore, from the University of Michigan.
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 space. A recent study from the University of Sherbrooke, in Canada, has shown how complex organic molecules could form on icy comets - from nothing more than simple molecules and radiation. And it's possible that this could explain how complex molecules like amino acids - which are the building blocks of proteins - could have originally formed billions of years ago and led to the beginning of life on Earth. Michael Huels, who led the study, told us more.
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 consumption has consequences for our "waist" in more ways than one! According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN, over a third of all the food made globally each year goes un-used, that's around 1.3 billion tonnes. But could adhering to a healthier diet in the food we do eat make a difference to the environment? Paul Behrens and colleagues from Lieden University in the Netherlands have set out to answer this question, and Katie Haylor's been finding out how.
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 shouldn't?
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 virus, HIV, attacks the body's immune system by infecting white blood cells, also called "lymphocytes". Lewis Thomson has been finding out what the future holds for treatment, and what it's like to be diagnosed with the virus, and met with Professor Andrew Lever from the University of Cambridge, who researches the virus.
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 November and sets out strategies to try to limit the rise in global temperatures to below 1.5 degrees C. With these targets in minds researchers the world over have been exploring various ways to reverse global warming. One suggestion is to spray about 5 million tonnes of reflective sulphur particles into the high atmosphere to temporarily reduce the intensity of sunlight and cool things down. Scientists at the University of Exeter have plugged the proposals into a complex climate simulator to find out what the consequences might be. Chris Smith spoke to Jim Haywood...
In this episode, we hear about tool use in monkeys, sleep regulation, marsupial placentas, health campaigns and why science papers are so hard to read.
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, Type 2 diabetes has been reversed in people undergoing weight loss surgery, who have been able to leave hospital after only a few days no longer needing their diabetes medication. Studies have suggested it's not the surgery itself, but the calorie restricted diet that follows which is responsible. Now, a team at Yale University has investigated the mechanisms by which this reversal is made possible. Heather Wark spoke to Dr. Rachel Perry, who was part of the study, to find out how it was done.
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 learning task, may be important; researchers looked at the sleep of participants in the lab and at home by measuring brain wave activity. They discovered that a particular stage of sleep called rapid eye movement stage sleep may be protective against fear learning when it occurs prior to fear learning, something which may have implications for protecting against the development of post traumatic stress disorder.
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 designed by London-based company DeepMind. AlphaGo Zero, the latest iteration of the programme, can learn to excel at the boardgame of Go without any help from humans. So what applications could AI learning independently have for our day-to-day lives? Katie Haylor spoke to computer scientist Satinder Singh from the University of Michigan, who specialises in an area within artificial intelligence called reinforcement learning.
In this special episode we hear about photosynthesis, forensics, peer review, and the past, present and future of eLife.
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, also known as "HDL", if injected into the bloodstream shortly after a heart attack can prevent heart cells from dying. The experiments suggest that the HDL temporarily alters the way heart cells burn glucose, giving them more energy and improving their survival. Chris Smith spoke to Sarah Heywood, who carried out the work at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia
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 going on around you? This week scientists at Imperial College have sussed out the answer.
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 screen thousands of potential drug molecules to find ways to prevent the disease from progressing in humans.
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 - with a technology being developed at Edinburgh University called Li-Fi, which would be faster and more secure. It works by making the lights in a room flash incredibly quickly to send signals. It's too fast for us to see, but does it nonetheless affect us, or the performance of the lights? Georgia Mills spoke with Wasiu Popoola from Edinburgh University to find out...
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 both in terms of providing chemical building blocks from which things can form, but also providing chemical signatures that highlight that something - like life - is happening. We had thought that one compound, called methyl chloride, was a surefire sign of life, but now astronomers in America and Denmark have detected the same chemical around a star without any planets, as well as on a comet in our own solar system. Izzie Clarke heard from Jes Jorgensen from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen how they collect this information from space
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 honey samples collected from around the world with the help of citizen scientists on every continent (except Antarctica!). Neonicotinoids are the most widely used pesticides in the world now and scientists suspect that, by getting into pollen and nectar, they're also having off-target effects on pollinators, like bees. This the first comprehensive global study to look at how widespread these effects might be. Dundee University neurobiologist Chris Connolly has written a commentary on the paper and shared his thoughts with Chris Smith
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 York, who's developed a soft, synthetic muscle that can substantially expand and contract alongside being strong.
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 surface of ponds in summer - may provide a solution to this problem. Stevie Bain chatted with Luke Mackinder from The University of York about how a better understanding of algae may allow us to engineer fast-growing crops
The complex branching patterns seen in the growth of tissues in the lungs, kidneys and pancreas have an elegantly simple mathematical solution...
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 be in their heads. Stevie Bain chatted with Arkhat Abzhanov to find out more
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.
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 to real world observations. Thus, there has been a fundamental lack of understanding about how plate dynamics work, until now.
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 spreads easily, and patients who do recover often relapse many times afterwards because the spectrum of so-called "good bacteria" in the bowel also goes off-kilter when you treat the infection. What's needed are highly-targeted antibiotics that can hit exclusively c. diff and not affect the good bacteria that we need to keep us healthy. Luckily, Sheffield University's Joe Kirk is on the case...
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 an idea get from the lab to your local chemist? Astra Zeneca, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, have recently moved to Cambridge, so Chris Smith took the opportunity to ask Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice-President of AstraZeneca's Innovative Medicines and Early Development Biotech Unit, about how a company like his invents and markets medicines in the modern era...
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 Colby College in the USA have used old 18th century nautical charts and compared them to modern satellite data as a novel way to understand coral loss over a period of 240 years. Michael Wheeler spoke with lead researcher Loren McClenachan, assistant professor at Colby College to find out more.
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 their eggs to circumvent this problem. But new research from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge suggests that the age of the uterus is important too. Alexandra Ashcroft spoke to Laura Woods to find out more
In this episode of the eLife Podcast, biomarkers for epilepsy, how fish can recognise faces, insect anti-anti aphrodisiacs, and why striving for novelty may hinder the progress of science...
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.
Our hairy insides protect us from the full force of fluids racing through our bodies and may inspire future robotic design
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 ends of bones causing pain, swelling and movement problems, commonly in the knee. Osteoarthritis cases have been on the rise, but not for the reasons you might think. Katie Haylor spoke to palaeoanthropologist Ian Wallace from Harvard University, who has taken a historical perspective on finding out why...
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....
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 the brain, called amyloid plaques. These plaques cause damage to nerve cells and are a hallmark feature of the disease. Currently, there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease. However, researchers at Yale University School of Medicine have made a striking discovery about the role of cellular garbage disposal units, called lysosomes, in the formation of these plaques. Lead researcher on the study, Shawn Ferguson explained to Stevie Bain exactly how these lysosomes are involved.
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 Princeton University have found evidence that exposure to violence reduces short term memory, even if the violent incident occured more than a decade ago. Alexandra Ashcroft spoke to Pietro Ortoleva to find out more...
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 amyloid builds up in the brain forming harmful deposits called plaques, which are toxic to nerve cells. What's confusing though is that the brain naturally makes beta amyloid all the time but seems to wash most of it away when we go to sleep. But what aspect of sleep is important for this clean-up process, and what are the implications for people who are chronically poor sleepers? At Washington University, in St Louis, Yo-El Ju recruited a small group of volunteers to find out.
Hear about the sea urchin immune system, symbiotic bacteria in squid, anxiety and a training course to promote collaboration between scientists.
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 down to their explosive origins. Douglas Boubert is a second year PhD student in the University of Cambridge, and he and his team used a computer model to try and work out what was going on. Georgia Mills heard what they found.
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 moment, no therapies are available to halt the disease, but it might be possible to keep patients functioning well, for longer, with a bit of brain-training. Cambridge University neuroscientists have invented a memory-boosting app called GameShow. Katie Haylor went to see the game's co-inventor Barbara Sahakian and lead scientist George Savulich...
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 Month, Chris Smith spoke to Oceanographer Simon Boxall from the University of Southampton about what's driving these changes and can we prevent them?
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 and down. Without you having to think about it, your eyes stay locked on their target by precisely matching the movements of your head. But for some people, maintaining a steady gaze like that is impossible because their eyes rhythmically drift off. Luckily a British team of doctors and eye surgeons have come up with a solution based on an implantable pair of magnets. Chris Smith spoke to Parashkev Nachev from UCL...
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 trying to find out why eggs look the way they do.
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 health risks and can even be life-threatening. Izzie Clarke investigated just what is causing the surge in dangerous heatwaves and how we can stay cool as things start to heat up.
In this special episode of the eLife Podcast, we discuss diseases common in tropical countries including tuberculosis, Zika, malaria and schistosomiasis.
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 payment to unscramble their data. What made the threat worse was that it had the ability to literally spread virally across the Internet by exploiting connections between computers on networks. But where did it come from, what can we do to mitigate the threat, and who is at risk of attacks like this? Chris Smith, Kate Feller and Andrew Holding put these questions to cybersecurity expert Paul Harris, from the Manchester-based online security and ethical hacking company Secarma...
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 these infections. Viruses usually attack by using parts of the victim's own cell machinery against it, so in theory, if you can change this component or protein, the virus won't recognise it, and its attack will have been neutralised. But, if you fiddle about with the stuff inside a cell too much, the cell won't be able to use it and will die anyway. Now, a group from the University of Granada in Spain may have a solution, at least for the bacteria E coli, by going back in time billions of years. Georgia Mills spoke to Jose Sanchez-Ruiz to find out more
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 ideal solution as it creates more C02. Jeroen Van Bokhoven and his team at ETH Zurich have found a new way to convert the methane into something cleaner, and a bit more useful. Tom Crawford found out what it's being turned it into
This month in the eLife podcast, how yeast makes an important drug from a plant root, why worms want to kill of males, and are we gender neutral when we pick people to referee papers?
In this episode we hear about helping people with paralysis to communicate, how exposing mice to nicotine can affect their sons, scaffold-building parasites, the origins of human handedness and plain-language summaries of research.
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 spectrum disorders.
How the plaque found on the teeth of Neanderthals sheds light on their diets and lifestyles.
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, Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge, thinks he's found the formula for social media campaigns to be effective in the long run, detailing what he calls "viral altruism" in a study published in Nature Human Behaviour. Ricky Nathvani went to go find out exactly what it is...
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 wirelessly transmitting its body temperature every twelve seconds to an external receiver. The MIT and Harvard-based team behind the work, which was published this week in Nature Biomedical Engineering, say this represents a step towards safer, cheaper ingestible sensors that could even be used to dispense drugs inside the body. Dr Giovanni Traverso of the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School, a senior author on the study, gave Ricky Nathvani the details...
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 some viruses can spread in men and women suggests it may, in fact, benefit the virus to tailor its aggression based on who it is infecting, as Vincent Jansen from Royal Holloway University explains to Tom O'Hanlon...
Unravelling the 6-million-year-long story of where we came from is a tricky business because palaeontologists have to rely on scarce, precious fossil remains that are hard to access and even harder to find in the first place. And there's a limit to what pieces of bone and teeth can reveal about our ancestors. But, occasionally, serendipity affords us a special glimpse into our past like it did in Laetoli, Tanzania, where a nearby erupting volcano captured the footsteps millions of years ago of a group of Australopithecines. In episode 34 of the eLife Podcast we heard from University of Perugia scientist Marco Cherin who's recently uncovered more of these fossilised footprints and made some even more surprising discoveries about our ancient relatives. In this special podcast he takes Chris Smith through the whole story...
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 is the Artic, where sea ice is steadily retreating, which means that the habitats for species that live there are also radically altering. So are these organisms equipped to cope with the change? Thomas Mock, from the University of East Anglia, has been studying one marine species which use a genetic trick to achieve considerable resilience, as he explained to Tom Crawford...
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 alpha-synuclein from accumulating on and damaging the membranes of nerve cells in the brain. Dosing with squalamine protected cells cultured in a dish as well as microscopic worms that have been genetically altered to make them develop a Parkinson's-like syndrome. Chris Dobson explains...
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 of 1314 red deer from the Isle of Rum to see if the brainy stags and does were more successful. She explained her results to Naked Scientist Tom O'Hanlon...
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 tea because we sent Connie Orbach along for you...
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about fossil footprints, taking medical research to the clinic, sleepy flies, team-working ants and diversity in science.
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 critical if we are to make accurate predictions about our the effects of climate change in future. So how might clams help? Well, they are among the oldest living animals on Earth, surviving for 500 years in some cases. Georgia Mills spoke to lead researcher David Reynolds from Cardiff University...
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 in is boiler, stove and vehicle exhausts and is also produced during house fires. At the moment, the only treatment is oxygen, but it's not very effective and often is administered too late. Now researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed an antidote molecule that can circulate in the bloodstream and pull the carbon monoxide from tissues to make it safe. Mark Gladwin told Chris Smith how it works, beginning with why carbon monoxide is poisonous in the first place
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 could be an increase in certain disease-causing organisms which benefit from the changing habitat. Ecosystems are complex and changes to the conditions each species needs to survive can impact on each other and throw it out of balance. Aaron Morris, from Bournemouth University and the IRD in France, has been looking at how changes in the local environment have affected populations of the bacterium responsible for the debilitating Buruli ulcer skin 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 detect it. An international group of scientists is trying to map dark energy in our night sky. But how do you map something that you can't see and what precisely is dark energy? Liam Messin spoke to Joe Zuntz from the University of Edinburgh who is involved in the project
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, semi-transparent and great conductors of electricity. But before they can be used in novel technologies we need efficient ways of making them. Graphite, as found in pencil leads, is made up of many layers of graphene and to isolate graphene all these layers have to be peeled away one by one until only a single layer is left. Researchers at UCL have found a new method of obtaining single 2D sheets from layered materials. Paddy Cullen, the study's lead author, spoke to Liam Messin about how they went about this
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 problem appears to go beyond playground trauma with research published this week showing that bullied children are more likely to be overweight at age 18. The study's lead author, Jessie Baldwin, explained to Liam Messin what they did
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 genetic basis for this resistance; he took Liam Messin through the study starting with how they collected parasite samples
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 degrees in Cambridge before joining NASA and going on to become the most experienced UK-born astronaut. Well he was back in Cambridge to talk about his experiences at a Pint of Science event and Connie Orbach went along to find out how a UK lad got to be a NASA astronaut...
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about the first heartbeat, African sleeping sickness, elephant genetics, the rubber hand illusion and women in science.
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 contradict our everyday experience and we are beginning to harness these effects to build technologies that seemed impossible before. Kerstin Gpfrich went to the 2016 National Quantum Technologies Showcase in London to find out about the latest quantum leaps in quantum technology.
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 groundwater or the air around them? Michael Strano and his group from MIT have produced just such a "bionic" plant by engineering spinach plants to produce more, or less, infrared light in the presence of certain chemicals. Connie Orbach heard how...
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 David Rothery, from the Open University, wasn't on the paper but he took Liam through what Matja Cuk, the study's lead author had done. He started by explaining what makes the Moon such a space oddity...
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 targets be sufficient? Over half of the Arctic sea ice area has been lost in the past 40 years and we may yet lose all of it. That's according to a new study from the Max Plank Institute for Metrology in Hamburg. Kerstin Gpfrich spoke to study's author Dirk Notz.
Now is there anybody out there? Or should I say is there anybody out there? Graihagh Jackson phones home to BBC broadcaster Dallas Campbell
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 disorders that run in families but can't be diagnosed without a sample of the developing baby's DNA to test. But obtaining that DNA is risky; pregnant women have to undergo tests like an amniocentesis, where a needle is used to obtain cells from around the baby. When doctors do this, there can be up to a one per cent risk that the woman will have a miscarriage. These tests also cannot be performed until after the 11'th week of pregnancy. A better option would be one that doesn't involve needles and can be performed much earlier. Chris Smith spoke to researcher Sascha Drewlo, who reckons that the same system currently used to do a simple cervical smear test is the answer...
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 really get desensitised to lying, and if so, what happens in our brains? Tali Sharot from University College London answered this question in her new study and Kerstin Gpfrich wanted to know more about it...
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 find out more Liam Messin went to the University of Cambridge's Earth Science Department to speak with Dr Alex Liu. Alex was co-author of a recent study detailing a fossilised dinosaur brain. Liam started by asking Alex precisely what he and his colleagues have described in the paper
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 rise in heroin purity and availability over the last three years. Age, they say, is also a factor because heroin users are getting older and they often have other conditions, such as lung disease and hepatitis that make them particularly vulnerable. But are these the only reasons? John Middleton, president of the UK's faculty of public health, in an editorial in this week's British Medical Journal, thinks that a change in policy towards the management of addiction, a few years back, might be more to blame. Chris asked him first what he thought of the ONS' own conclusions...
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, even after many decades of campaigning there are still issues with gender equality across many areas of life from equal pay for equal work to shared parental leave or even just differences in ways of working. One topic that's really important to us here at the Naked Scientists is the balance of men and women in STEM research, that's Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, so to delve into this a bit further Kat was joined by Dame Barbara Stocking, president of the women only Murray Edwards college at Cambridge
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 spent on clinical placements. Connie Orbach went to meet up with some of these students to hear how they're getting on. Starting with 4th year Keerthi Senthil who Connie grabbed on his lunch break, only weeks into his first placement on the wards...
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 found a new drug duo to eliminate the need for debilitating lifelong HIV treatments. Kerstin Gpfrich spoke to Prof Aftab Ansari to find out how it works...
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 Richie, uncovering stories of naughty nurses, torturous medical tools and deathbed champagne.
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 long term atmospheric measurements of methane levels with a way of fingerprinting where the gas has come from has enabled scientists at the University of Colorado to make more accurate predictions of the status quo. Grant Allen is an atmospheric scientist at the University of Manchester and wrote a commentary on the new study for the journal Nature, where it's been published this week. Chris Smith wanted to know about the findings and the implications
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about ancient proteins, aging mice, mosquito nets, resourceful plants and cocktail party conversations.
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 sought help from their owners were set up a different way genetically from dogs that like to be more wolf-like and independent. Georgia Mills spoke to researcher Per Jensen to hear what he's sniffed out...
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 spoke to Clint Perry, who works at Queen Mary University of London...
For this week's mythconception, Kat Arney investigates the many mysteries surrounding the notorious Bermuda Triangle.
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 try and reduce it, and so there have been hundreds of social experiments trying to establish this. But this week, some scientists have taken a different approach, and looked across all mammals for answers, and found that throughout human ancestry, we have been becoming progressively more violent. Laura Brooks spoke to Professor Mark Pagel of the University of Reading, who had been looking into the study.
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, called palmitoleic acid, can potently protect arteries against becoming clogged. When it's fed to mice it cuts their levels of arterial disease by over 30 per cent. Ebru Erbay, at Bilkent University in Turkey, is sufficiently impressed with the performance of palmitoleic acid on her mice that she now even eats it herself as she told Dr. Chris Smith.
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 as we get older, especially if we all have to keep working much later in life. But what does change is our ability to drive safely. Yet although there might be the perception that older drivers are less safe on the roads than younger ones, this actually isn't true, as Kat Arney found out when she spoke to Swansea University researcher Charles Musselwhite. She started by asking him why old people need to be out on the roads in the first place.
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 damages our lungs at a molecular level. Kat Arney's been finding out.
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 the Anthropocene and Chris Smith wanted to find out what it means for our present and our future
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 electronics. But getting it back out is chemically very tricky, meaning large amounts of the precious metal is actually ending up in landfill! Maybe not for much longer though, because researchers from the University of Edinburgh have developed a chemical solution to the problem, as Connie Orbach heard from Professor Jason Love
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 previously knew almost nothing about. Last week, a whole constellation of papers detailing Dawn's discoveries were published in the journal Science. Laura Brooks asked David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University, to take her through the results...
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about human height, fish joints, colour vision, chimpanzees using tools and open science.
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 complex, with neurons crisscrossing left, right and centre. Cutting it into thin sections to study diseases like dementia means you lose all that complexity. In an ideal world then, scientists would be able to don 3D glasses and see the intact brain. Fortunately, Ali Ertuerk and his team at LMU Munich's Acute Brain Injury Research Group have found how to make a whole rat see-through, and image its brain. Laura Brooks caught up with Ali to find out how it works
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. What we need are soft-skinned robots and this is precisely what a team of Harvard University researchers have built: an autonomous, 3D printed octopus-shaped soft robot nicknamed "octobot." Lucka Bibic spoke with Michael Wehner about their latest invention
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 pinpointed part of the brain thought to drive us to learn how to be more helpful. The findings also suggest that people with higher levels of empathy are quicker to learn what they need to do to help. Patricia Lockwood and her team measured participants' brain activity in an MRI scanner while they tried to win money - either for themselves, or for another person, as she explained to Laura Brooks...
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 an otherwise healthy individual, is a mystery. Now Francesca Duncan, who studies female fertility at Northwestern University, has discovered that older ovaries contain large amounts of fibrous tissue produced by inflammation, and this appears to be harming the ability of the ovary to nurture healthy eggs
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 striven to answer and Dr Stacey Harmer thinks she has the answer as she explained to Lucka Bibic...
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 normally kill you and me. So, if we can look to animals like this, we might come up with a way to aide and abet healing in groups such as our own, the mammals. Graihagh Jackson caught up with Dr Jennifer Ann, who made the discovery
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 of the country. The good news is that scientists testing three new types of Zika vaccine have found that they all work safely and rapidly in monkeys. One of the vaccines is made from killed virus grown in culture, another is based on a small piece of DNA containing the genetic information coding for the outer coat of Zika, and the third is made by adding part of that same outer coat to a common cold adeno virus. Trials on humans are the next step, as Chris Smith finds out from Dan Barouch who is leading the effort at Harvard Medical School
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 Jupiter at the beginning of July, while in a new finding, it appears the famous 'Great Red Spot' is kicking up a bigger storm than first imagined. Telescope in hand, Claire Armstrong sought to catch a glimpse of the gas giant in the night sky, as explained by NASA's Jack Connerney and David Rothery from the Open University.
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 clinical expertise and appropriate equipment to diagnose the disease. Adopting a technique called machine learning, scientists at Oxford University have taken clinical data from children with pneumonia to 'teach' a machine to identify critical symptoms and diagnose future cases. This machine can be something as easily distributed as a mobile phone, giving those who don't have easy access to doctors a simple way to assess a child's condition. Claire Armstrong spoke to Elina Naydenova to hear how.
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 of the tumour. Now, researchers from MIT have developed a hydrogen patch with three types of therapy applied directly to the tumour itself. Their anti-cancer patch was tested on lab mice and caused the cancer to go into complete remission. Lucka Bibic attempted to uncover some of the patch's secrets from researcher Dr Natalie Artzi from MIT...
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 3D printed parts can now show how the paleodiet of the animals and their tooth wear rate affected their lifespan as Aleksis Karme explained to Lucka Bibic.
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 functioning of the immune system, weaker responses to vaccination and, overall, higher rates of morbidity. But how a healthy mind makes for a healthy body wasn't known. Now, by artificially stimulating the reward circuitry in the brains of mice, scientists in Israel have shown that one of the nerve pathways in the body - called the sympathetic nervous system - can directly manipulate the immune system. Claire Armstrong spoke to Dr Asya Rolls to hear how...
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 molecules including harmful nerve gases. Lucka Bibic spoke to inventor Rob Ameloot...
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's been going on
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 way to test new drugs much more safely. Long term it could lead to the creation of a cardiac repair patch that could be "pasted in" to replace or control damaged heart tissue. The work's taking place in the lab of Harvard's Charles Lieber and he told Chris Smith about what they've been up to...
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 implications for recycling, as Philip Brown explained to Lucka Bibic...
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 running out of it. Luckily, Jon Gluyas from Durham University, has come up with a new way of finding it. Claire Armstrong spoke to him to hear how...
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 Cowley from Leceister University...
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 Zika infection and babies being born with microcephaly or an abnormally small head. Now scientists in the US have taken the first steps towards developing a much-needed vaccine, which they've so far tested successfully on mice. Dan Barouch from Harvard University spoke to Chris Smith...
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 used to test a series of new cystic fibrosis drugs that are now entering the clinic. But because these agents don't work on everyone, finding out who will benefit can mean a laborious trial for the patient. Mini guts on the other hand take just a few weeks to grow and give results in just days or hours. Jeffrey Beekman, from the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, Utrecht, invented the technique...
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? What happens when the sun begins to fade and the nigh falls over the ocean? Can a solar plane keep flying? Lucka Bibic caught up with co-pilot Andre Borschberg to ask about his green aviation mission.
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about drug production, early career researchers, honeybees, human migrations and pain.
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 turning to alternative materials such as carbon fibre. But, as Kat Arney discovered, the natural world may provide even more options for making instruments with exciting new sound properties.
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 in something as simple as iron? Doctor Paul Kalra is a cardiologist from Portsmouth Hospital and he gave Chris Smith the lowdown.
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 to many scientists. So how can we try to prevent young people from dying unexpectedly like this? Could genetic screening be the answer? Georgia Mills caught up with Michael Ackerman, from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, at the British Cardiovascular Society Conference 2016.
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 excess carbon dioxide have not been very effective. Only a small amount of carbon dioxide actually gets stored permanently. But researchers at Columbia University have demonstrated that their unique carbon capture and storage process can actually convert carbon dioxide into environmentally friendly limestone in less than two years. Fanny Yuen spoke with Dr. Juerg Matter to hear more about his pilot study.
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 fair to say, you certainly wouldn't be able to see the light at the end of it! Our resident technology expert Peter Cowley talked Connie Orbach through the project.
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 atherosclerosis. Therefore, it is imperative to understand and carefully control our immune system activity. Our innate or non-specific immune system, acts as our body's first line of defence, these cells quickly reach the site, form a barrier, remove foreign material, and activate our more sophisticated adaptive immune system. Until now these non-specific immune cells were believed to have no memory and act in a generic way. But new research from the University of Bristol shows that different experiences can dramatically change the function of these innate immune cells.Fanny Yuen interviewed Dr. Helen Weavers to find out more about how we can better control our immune systems.
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 first time, they have been able to show that fish actually prefer to eat microplastic particles rather than their own food of zooplankton, causing disastrous effects to their survival. Fanny Yuen and spoke with Dr. Oona Lnnstedt to better understand the issue.
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 damage to our cells, which leads them to grow in an uncontrolled and invasive way. But because the cancer cells are part of our own body, the immune system normally ignores them because they're regarded as non-hostile. What Ugur Sahin and his colleagues are doing is to identify a series of chemical markers that are unique to a patient's cancer cells and then turn these into a genetic message that is injected into the bloodstream. Because it's packaged up to resemble an infection, it re-programmes the immune system's white blood cells - or lymphocytes - to track down the tumour and destroy it. Chris Smith learnt all about it...
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 and cheese sandwich. But what does salt do to our insides? Viknesh Selvarajah from Addenbrooke's Hospital, in Cambridge, researches the impacts of salt and has a very unique perspective on the effects of high blood pressure, as he explained to Chris Smith.
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about parasitic worms, dog tumours, epilepsy, DNA sequencing classes and social behaviour in mice.
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 about for giving patients frozen expressions.
But now, researchers say that having Botox not only makes your face difficult to read, but also impairs your ability to read the emotion of others. This stems from the theory of embodiment. For a person to process an emotion that they see, they are required to mimicking that emotion. When we see our friend smile, our face automatically smiles a little as well.
Although this smile may be imperceptible, this action aids in our understanding of our friend's emotional expression.
However, if your facial muscles are paralysed by Botox, you cannot copy your friend's expression, and; therefore, you will have difficulty understanding how they are feeling.
Fanny Yuen spoke to lead researcher Jenny Baumeister from the SISSA in Italy to better understand how she conducted her study.
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 will immediately jump out. But If you put it in cold water and slowly heat it, it will boil to death " He also adds "Please don't harm any frogs disproving it!" Fortunately for Tim - and the frogs - someone has already done this experiment, or at least got as close to it as they feel ethically able to, without actually boiling any frogs alive. Kat Arney gets into hot water finding out...
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 centuries, and a new exhibition at the Science Museum in London will be showcasing our love of these Metal Mickeys, although sadly we'll have to wait until next year for it to open. Kat Arney went along to get a sneak preview of one of the shining metal stars of the show, and also to the exhibition's human curator, Ben Russell.
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...
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 early earth to the very first cell, lending support to the so called RNA world theory. Lead researcher Professor Thomas Carell spoke to Emma Sackville about what RNA theory is and how their research supports it...
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 previously considered to be fairly harmless, has been linked to birth defects and miscarriages in a dramatic shift that scientists are unable to explain. However, we are now one step closer to understanding this virus as the development of a new mouse model may have solved one piece of the puzzle. Connie Orbach spoke to lead researcher Michael Diamond from Washington University in St Louis.
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 Hedgehog, is involved in the development of limbs, fins and gills. The idea that the formation of gills and legs might be linked is actually not a new one and was first proposed more than a century ago based on the similarities in appearances of the two structures, but scientists abandoned the notion as fanciful thinking. Connie Orbach went to see researcher Andrew Gillis, who has discovered that the idea "has legs" after all...
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 and physicist Nishad Karim to find out how techniques from physics are allowing us to visualise objects without damaging them...
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 all thanks to the squishy grey stuff in our skulls - our brains. It's often said that humans have unusually big brains, which explains our exceptional intelligence, but it turns out that may not strictly be true. Kat Arney looks at the popular myth that a bigger brain means a higher level of intelligence...
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. LSD was widely used until the 1960s when it was made illegal, so very little research has actually been done using modern neuroscience techniques to look at how LSD affects the brain and how it might be useful therapeutically. Until now, that is. Imperial College's Robin Carhart-Harris has been administering the drug to volunteers, as he explained to Chris Smith...
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 agriculture was established and humans swapped a hunter gatherer lifestyle for life in larger group settlements, our ancestors also appear to have embraced monogamy - having a single partner, rather than multiple wives. Mathematician Chris Bauch has designed a computer simulation that suggests that, as populations increase in size, the threat of sexual disease drives the switch to monogamy, and the desire to punish those that don't toe the line, as he explained to Chris Smith
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, where leaders in satellite and space technology have been meeting to discuss what's up there
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 David Rothery has been taking a look at the papers charting some of the discoveries, which were unveiled this week in the journal Science, and he went through the findings with Chris Smith...
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about aging, artificial fingertips, ancient DNA, antibiotic resistance and dengue fever.
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 brain area and robs the victim of the ability to perform whatever tasks that brain area used to process. But an electrical current applied to the head for a short time, even years after a stroke, appears to open up new circuits in the brain, restoring some of the lost abilities, as Oxford University's Heidi Johansen-Berg explained to Chris Smith...
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.
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. With a third of global food supply coming from crop species that are to some extent dependent on bees it's important that we halt this decline. Felicity Bedford went to Cambridge University's King's College to meet Kristen Treen, who looks after the honeybees there, and see how their beehives have been getting on this winter
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 innocent volunteers, if a lab-coated scientist ordered them to do so. In fact the recipients of the shocks were actually actors, who escaped unharmed. Milgram's experiments raised many ethical questions - not least about whether it was right to do them at all - and Patrick Haggard from UCL is now trying to find out to what extent people feel a sense of responsibility or control when they're ordered to do something nasty to someone else. He told Kat Arney about his latest shocking experiments.
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 Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the US, have developed a method to reprogramme the immune system to selectively target cancer cells. This means that, unlike traditional chemotherapy, which can't tell healthy and tumour tissue apart - and this is what causes unpleasant side effects - the immune system acts with surgical precision, selectively weeding out rogue cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue untouched. But how does this work, what are the risks and is this the game changer we've all been waiting for? Chris Smith asked Chris Rudd, who's an immunologist at the University of Cambridge where he works on this same approach, for his opinion
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 become more variable. Because, if the temperatures, cloud cover and rainfall become less predictable and operate over a greater range than they have historically, this could affect how the ecosystems - the web of plant and animal life - in those areas can operate. And this week scientists took the first steps towards studying whether this is a real risk and highlighting those areas we need to worry about. Alastair Seddon is at the University of Bergen and he talked Chris Smith through his research.
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 teach children about things like biology and physics, featuring songs like 'My Brother the Ape' and 'I Am a Paleontologist'. The band dropped by Cambridge as part of a tour promoting their new album 'Glean', so Naked Scientist Georgia Mills took the opportunity to speak to founding member John Linnell about songs, science and controversy...
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 ripples and yesterday, the LIGO team announced they had finally detected them. Graihagh Jackson went to the announcement and met with the British scientists on the LIGO team...
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 which children are born with underdeveloped brains. Consultant virologist Tim Wreghitt spoke to Chris Smith about the situation...
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about midnight snacking, X-ray imaging of fossils, hummingbirds, monkeys gambling and axolotls regenerating...
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 open arms by everyone, with some arguing this is the first step to 'designer babies.' Graihagh Jackson spoke to Geneticist Andrew Wood to find out what exactly gene editing involves...
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 of these majestic creatures have beached across the UK, the Netherlands and Germany Some arrived alive, some were already dead and there's a lot of speculation as to what caused it to happen Graihagh Jackson's been investigating with the help of marine ecologist Bill Amos
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 from Oxford University who has given conspiracy theorists the benefit of the doubt and built a mathematical model to test whether, if these conspiracies were real, they would still be a secret...
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 special is its attention to detail when it comes to historical and medical accuracy, such as when it tackled the Thalidomide scandal from the late 1950s. Ginny Smith recently had the opportunity to visit the set of Call the Midwife and talk to those who make the show happen, both on and off the screen. She started by asking Executive Producer Dame Pippa Harris about just what it is that makes the show so popular
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 protective mechanisms might be the key to human health.
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 terrorists have at their disposal a range of communications and social network tools to help them to form alliances, attract new recruits and orchestrate terror campaigns. But, the associations that terrorists make through these channels can also help to identify them, if police are able to screen this sort of data routinely. Most people, though, are justifiably concerned about privacy. Now Michael Kearns, from the University of Pennsylvania, has come up with a way to keep honest data safe yet still enable security forces to track down the bad guys: you add some noise to the information, as he explained to naked scientist Connie Orbach...
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 leukemia. At the moment it tends to have a relatively poor prognosis and over the past 40 years there have been relatively few new treatments for the disease. A bone marrow transplant is often the only chance an individual has. But this week an international team of scientists led by researchers in the UK announced the discovery of a new way to control the disease by blocking the signals that drive the growth of the cancerous blood cells. Connie Orbach asked Dr Matt Kaiser, from the cancer charity Bloodwise, to talk her through how this new approach might work
Heat-seeking behaviour in mosquitoes, mass spawning in coral reefs, social organization in ants, fear in rats and tissue regeneration in newts go under the microscope in Episode 26 of the eLife Podcast...
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 Virginia Tech wouldn't let sleeping dogs lie and they've worked out the physics behind how dogs drink. Georgia Mills caught up with lead researcher Sunny Jung, who explained how they did it.
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 around the world. Connie Orbach went to join the celebrations at the Science Museum in London...
"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 this be achieved, can it be achieved at all, what has the UK signed up to do? Manchester University climate scientist Alice Bows-Larkin was there to hear the verdict...
A plant protein used to communicate with friendly soil fungi has been identified by Cambridge University scientists.
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 "Breakthrough of the Year".
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 has been at the firm since its inception; he explained to Graihagh Jackson how he and 11 other engineers turned the business into one of the world's largest tech firms...
Researchers have linked a gene with your ability to stop smoking, but not all of the scientific community is in agreement...
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 lonely, or isolated, on the other hand, fare less well and are more prone to ill-health. Now a new study, published this week in the journal PNAS and examining the immune systems of lonely people and monkeys has revealed why this might be. John Capitanio revealed all to Chris Smith...
Compulsive sexual behaviour, more commonly known as sex addiction, is driven by the huge novelty provided by online material, a new study has found.
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. Some ruffs are territorial and impress using dramatic neck feathers. Less common are the 'girlfriend stealers' who display on the edge of territories and attempt to lure females away. Finally, female mimics or 'cross dressers' approach mates in disguise. Jon Slate from the University of Sheffield explains to Felicity Bedford how genetics played a part in the evolution of these complex behavioural strategies.
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 struggled to investigate effects in men. However, new work from the University of Cambridge has shown that men have much more reliable memories than once thought as Dr Felix Day explained to Connie Orbach.
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 sounds such as a car engine they will also make people feel emotional. Daniel Bowling, a neuroscientist from the University of Vienna spoke to Rosalind Davies about what the researchers had done, and what these sound properties are.
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 DNA - the famous double helix shape. Now, 60 years later, another Cambridge scientist - Bill Amos - has made a further DNA discovery - this time about the way the genetic code changes or mutates to allow evolution to happen, as he explained to Graihagh Jackson.
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 to pile up lots of these single layers you'd get graphite, just like the led in a pencil. For the first time in the UK more than 40 companies from around the world came together to show the latest in graphene related technologies. Connie Orbach went along to see what she could find and started by talking to Gaute Juliussen from the graphine production company Graphitene.
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about deep-sea bacteria, cigarette smoke and lung disease, antibiotic resistance, unconscious perception, and the benefits of sleep.
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 talk about the latest progress, ideas and issues in cancer research. On the first night, the charity Breast Cancer Now hosted a heated debate discussing whether after spending so much money investigating the causes of breast cancer as well as treating it, it's now time to focus efforts on preventing the disease in the first place. Sarah Hazell, Senior Research Manager at Breast Cancer Now, gave Kat a flavour of the discussion.
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 although there's no smoke, there's certainly a fire of controversy around e-cigs, as Kat Arney found out when she spoke to Linda Bauld, professor of health policy at the University of Stirling, who chaired a panel discussion about e-cigarettes at the NCRI Cancer Conference.
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 more severe illnesses like pneumonia. Despite it's huge global impact we still don't have a vaccine for RSV and Dr Ruth Karron from John Hopkins University explains why to Chris Smith.
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 to replace the lens with a plastic one currently the only solution. Twenty million sufferers around the world are blind because they cannot access surgical treatments. But help could be on it's way, as a potential non-surgical treatment method has been described in the journal Science this week. It follows another advancement in cataract science published recently in Nature. Roy Quinlan from the University of Durham, whose perspectives article on the subject has been published alongside the research paper, talks to Rosalind Davies about how important these new findings could be.
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 involved in inducing labour in animals, but doesn't seem to work the same way in people. A paper this week published in Science Signalling has suggested a potential way cortisol does have a part to play in human childbirth. Georgia Mills caught up with Professor Joe Herbert, from Cambridge University, to discuss the study.
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 Alexander van Dyke. As he explains to Charis Lestrange, he's created what's known as a "biphilic" material that can stop frost from forming so easily on a surface. It consists of two types of material: one hydrophilic, which attracts water, and the other hydrophobic, or water-repelling. Placed in a certain pattern, these can keep water droplets moving so they don't have time to freeze...
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 at the University of Leipzig found that this difference in intelligence is very small and the more important finding was about birth order and personality. Charis Lestrange spoke with lead author Julia Rohrer to find out more.
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 to coat steel with the compound tungsten oxide has been reported by researchers from Harvard University in Nature Communications this week. It enables liquid to slip off the surface while keeping the steel strong. Dr Ben de Laune, a materials chemist from the University of Birmingham, explains to Rosalind Davies why this is so important.
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 scientific and engineering challenges facing the world. The funding will come from the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the EPSRC. Professor Philip Nelson is the EPSRC's chief executive, and he spoke to Kat Arney about how the projects were selected...