Naked Scientists, In Short Special Editions Podcast

Climate change is bad news for bees

13 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It's hard to miss the fact that bees are in trouble, with worrying news of colony collapse disorder devastating bee numbers, and concerns about the ef...

Why do our brains age?

13 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

One of the key factors that makes the brain age has been uncovered by scientists in the US. Young mice infused with the blood of older animals develop...

Predicting depression and anxiety

12 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

More than a quarter of people are affected by anxiety or depression each year. But are some people more at risk than others? By studying groups of rhe...

RoboCabs: the key to curbing emissions?

12 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

How does being driven around in a robotic taxi grab you? Currently, cars contribute 13% to our greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. However, a new stud...

Men and women may feel pain differently

03 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It's an age-old debate, who feels more pain, men or women? Scientists at McGill University have taken us one step closer to answering this question wi...

What do fish and aircraft have in common?

02 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

What do fish and aircraft have in common? Well, water and air are both fluids. And when fish move their tails and bodies from side to side, they push ...

Just give me a second...

29 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Rejoice because at midnight tonight, a second will be added to clocks across the world. Seeing as you now have all of this extra time, here's Naked Sc...

PPI's Increase Heart Attack Risk

22 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

One of the world's most widely-used classes of drugs could significantly increase your risk of suffering a heart attack; that's according to a new stu...

Self-unrolling Brain Implant

21 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists in the US have developed a new brain implant that can be used to record information from nerve cells, and also to transmit signals into the...

75 million year-old Dinosaur Cells found

21 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

While Jurassic World may be wowing the crowds at the cinema, a new study from researchers at Imperial College has been making waves in the world of re...

Hawkmoths Shadowy Existence Uncovered

21 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Hawkmoths live a shadowy existence; they stick their tongues down the flowers' neck, all the while being tossed about in the wind. And as if that wasn...

Exploring Saturn's Newest Ring

14 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Saturn is one of the most well-known planets in the solar system, perhaps owing to its distinctive set of rings. The largest of these rings, the H-rin...

Coffee staves off depression

11 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Coffee is an essential part of life for many of us, but could it help to cut depression? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Sci...

Ending Earthquakes With Water

11 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Earthquakes occur at faults, or fractures, in the Earth's crust - where two big slabs of rock meet. Movement under the surface tries to push the rocks...

Sequencing Schizophrenia

04 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The specific genes that cause schizophrenic symptoms have been found by researchers at Cardiff University. A huge study of the DNA of over 10,000 schi...

A Study in Scarlet

17 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Dressing in red around the office might have your colleagues seeing you in a different light! A new study from Durham University's Robert Barton has f...

Baboon Buddies

17 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Humans, like all other primates, are a sociable bunch and we tend to pick friends who are fairly similar to us in terms of education, religion, person...

Choose Your Treatment Wisely

17 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

A campaign to combat "over-treatment" of patients has been announced by doctors' leaders this week. Called "Choosing Wisely", the initiative promotes ...

Winter Immune Blues

17 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The incidence of many diseases, including heart attacks and multiple sclerosis, peaks in winter time. Now it looks like this could be an unfortunate t...

Selective Hearing

17 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

How our ears screen out sounds so that we can listen selectively only to those sounds we want to hear - like a friend's voice across a noisy room for ...

Cells Turn Inside-Out

14 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Plants and animals are incredible constructions, built from the fundamental building blocks of cells. But how are we made? By modelling how algae cell...

Facebook leads to biased views

14 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Content curation and news filtering by Facebook, as well as other social media websites, likely leads to ideological biases in the information individ...

Males donate competitively

23 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

If you are thinking of raising money for charity, what's the best way to ensure you hit your fundraising target? According to Nichola Raihani from UCL...

Modern lifestyles reduce gut bug diversity

21 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

You are not alone! Your body is home to a whole host of bacteria that live in and on you: your microbiome. You might be slightly repulsed by this idea...

How do we hear time within sounds?

20 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

While you listen to a noise, nerve cells in your brain are busy processing sound information and helping you make sense it. One big mystery in the wor...

GM Salmonella shrinks cancers

20 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Salmonella bacteria can be modified to make a safe anti-cancer treatment, scientists have shown. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the N...

Dark matter may not be completely 'dark'

19 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Druham Universtiy's Richard Massey takes Chris Smith to a galaxy far, far away; or, more accurately, several galaxies over, which also happen to have ...

How the Moon was Made

13 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

How the Earth came by its Moon has always been something of a mystery: Scientists had theorised that a Mars-sized planet, called Theia, crashed into E...

Evidence of dinosaur cannibalism

12 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Evidence has been revealed that a type of dinosaur fell victim to occasional cannibalism. Daspletosaurus was a member of the tyrannosaurs group, and r...

Yeast: Rising from the bread

01 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

A favourite Easter tradition are hot cross buns, but there's one particular ingredient which no bread can do without: yeast. What is about this strang...

Listening to the bat highway code

26 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

If you've ever seen huge flocks of birds or a shoal of fish, you might have wondered how they are all able to move together without ever colliding. No...

When humans made their mark on the world

15 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Geologists like to divide up history into epochs, or eras, separated by events that leave an indelible mark in the geological record of the earth - fo...

How light can transmit WiFi

15 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Anyone who has struggled with a lousy WiFi connection in a busy public space knows only too well that there are limits to how much data can be beamed ...

Adapting to Arsenic

09 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

In a remote area in the Andes mountain there exist perilously high levels of arsenic: one of the most toxic substances known to man. But people have b...

Sophie the Stegosaurus

07 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Kat Arney meets Sophie the Stegosaurus, and Natural History Museum researcher Charlotte Brassey. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting th...

What can we learn from NASA's Dawn probe?

06 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

After a seven and a half year journey, and with a price tag just shy of half a billion Dollars, NASA's Dawn spacecraft finally has the asteroid Ceres ...

FameLab: the snapping shrimp

25 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

FameLab is a competition where scientists battle it out to be the best at giving engaging short talks on their favourite areas of research. Six Cambri...

Holes give diamonds their colour

22 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Using a new super powerful electron microscope, scientists have discovered tiny holes are responsible for giving brown diamonds their colour. Like thi...

Space Worms

15 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Worms are about to help scientists to boldly go where no researcher has been before, by venturing into space to help us to understand how changes in g...

Detecting dark matter

13 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

It makes up most of the stuff in our universe, but we can't see it or weigh it - but we know it has to be there. This elusive substance is dark matter...

Positive thinking improves your health

07 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Has anyone ever told you to lose a few pounds? Get a bit more active? Work harder in school? We can sometimes become a bit defensive when given this t...

Differences between male and female brains

06 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Your brain is more complex and powerful than the world's biggest supercomputer, built while you're a baby growing in the womb from the recipes encoded...

From venom to medicine

06 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

A novel approach to detecting interactions between scorpion venom and its target molecule could aid in the discovery of new drugs for treatment of a w...

Mitochondrial Diseases: 3 Parent Embryos

04 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

What are so-called "3 parent embryos", and what are the arguments for allowing it? Hannah Critchlow discussed the issues with MP Julian Huppert, who s...

Chicks can count too!

02 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Humans do it. Primates do it. And now it's been found out that birds can also do it - 3 day old chickens have been shown to order numbers low to high,...

How close are we to the next mass extinction?

02 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Around 250 million years ago our world was a very different place. Rather than the different continents we know today, there was only one giant land m...

Nano-Scale Quill Pen

27 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Quill pens might be about to make a comeback - but not in a stationers! Because researchers have developed a nano-scale ink pen that can be used to co...

Super-slippery, water repellent surfaces

24 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

A new breed of super metals, that are extremely water repellent have been created. Their potential applications range from rust and frost free aircraf...

Sea turtle sat nav

17 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Sea turtles follow unique magnetic signatures to return to their home beaches to lay their eggs. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the N...

Crashing Cars

16 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Over 3000 people are killed on the world's roads every day with further 20-50 million people left injured or disabled. And whilst the number of seriou...

Geese fly over the Himalayas like a roller coaster

16 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Bar-headed geese reach altitudes of several thousand meters in their annual migration across the world's highest mountain range. A new study shows tha...

Can cycling keep you younger?

13 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

A common New year's resolution is to hit the gym and get fit. But while most people might give up and return to the comfort of the sofa by February, r...

Could a brain scan predict your future?

12 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Could a brain scan predict your weight, your school grades and your happiness levels two years down the line? Like this podcast? Please help us by sup...

Cartoons are deadly (for lead roles)

24 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Whether it's an outing to the cinema or gathered in the living room, films are a great way to spend time as a family at Christmas. If children are inv...

Has Curiosity found life on Mars?

20 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Last week scientists attending the American Geophysical Union meeting in California unveiled measurements made on Mars by the Curisoity rover, which h...

Machine makes people more empathic

19 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

There's the old saying that if you want to understand someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. But what if you could walk in their actual body?...

Feeling old shortens your life

19 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

People often talk about feeling their age, but how old you say you feel is strongly linked to your life expectancy. A new study at UCL in London has s...

Foraging for Fossils

15 Dec 2014

Contributed by Lukas

How do we know about the ancient animals that used to roam the Earth? If all life got its start in the sea, then why do most animals now live on land?...

reCAPTCHA with Luis von Ahn

30 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Luis von Ahn invented CAPTCHA - the system that uses a picture of a word to determine whether you are a human or a computer. But when von Ahn realised...

Does your dog understand you?

27 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Does your dog pay attention to what you say? Thinking back to the last time it rolled in something stinky, or ran off with your socks, you may not be ...

The science behind fasting

27 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

What's the science behind the so-called 5:2 or intermittent fasting diet? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The fight against Ebola

17 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Marie Blackman Northwood is a biomedical scientists normally based in Cambridge,who is currently in Sierra Leone, lending her hand to the fight agains...

Shift Work Shafts Brains

14 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers say that doing anti-social shifts over many years can dent your brain power. In other words you can't think straight. The team collected d...

How wildcats became kitty cats

14 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Just a handful of genetic changes are what turned wildcats into domestic pets, scientists have now shown. And many of these changes are linked with ge...

Body Clocks

14 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Are you a morning person or a night owl? Whichever you are, your daily rhythm is determined by your circadian clock - powered by a small group of cell...

Religion and nature

14 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Religion and nature might have more to do with each other than you thought. In the biggest study of its kind, a team of evolutionary biologists, anthr...

Healthy-Looking Leaders

10 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Would you prefer your prime minister, president, or beloved leader to look healthy, intelligent, or both? Researchers from the VU University of Amster...

Women in Science

10 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Bussey, professor, budding rock star and performer explains to Hannah Critchlow how he's addressing scientific gender inequality with a re-release...

Imaging the Genome

31 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The quest to understand the fundamental rules governing life has taken another step forward, as new research from the University of Cambridge reveals....

Foreign species invading the UK

20 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

As international trade increases, particularly by sea, we're seeing more stowaways; but not of the human variety. Scientists are reporting that animal...

Detection dogs

14 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Whilst Magic - a young golden retriever - may love chasing a stick, curling up on a rug and enjoying a biscuit as much as the next dog, he is certainl...

The price of alcohol

29 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Thousands die due to alcohol consumption each year, did raising the price of alcohol in the UK reduce these costs? Like this podcast? Please help us b...

The smartest part of our brain

29 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Which part of our brain helped us become the social and (for the most part) intelligent creatures we are today? Like this podcast? Please help us by s...

How plastic pollution may harm marine life

29 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Tamara Galloway, Matt Cole and Ceri Lewis of the University of Exeter talk about their research on the effects ...

Your nose knows death is imminent

29 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Until recently when technology took over, a coal miner's best friend was a caged canary that would warn of a build-up of life-threatening gases. Now U...

New solar cells

28 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Hydrogen is regarded as an excellent candidate future fuel on the grounds that it is relatively easy to store and it burns cleanly to produce only hea...

How dinosaur arms turned into bird wings

28 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

You can forget Jurassic Park because actually dinosaurs are all around us! And I'm not joking because the fact is that when you see a chirping bird, y...

Common cold and asthma

28 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

During an asthma attack, inflammation in the airways leads to breathlessness, and severe cases can end up with sufferers being hospitalised or even dy...

Do baby fish speak?

27 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

We've all heard that whales and dolphins have a highly developed way of making sounds to communicate with each. However when it come to ordinary fish ...

Best place for cardiac arrest

25 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

A cardiac arrest is when a person's heart stops beating and they collapse. It affects 30,000 people every year in the UK.The majority of these occur o...

Strategic decision making revealed

24 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Are you a strategic decision maker? Is your brain anterior cingulate cortex switched off or on? Are random decisions being made or are you basing them...

Worrying world population

18 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

World leaders had been planning for a world population of about 9 billion by 2050. But now a new analysis, based on fresh data and more advanced stati...

Ant-sized radios

16 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Wireless connections are everywhere now. Perhaps you're listening to us through your smartphone or laptop, or maybe you have one of those new-fangled ...

Modifying mice memories

15 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists have been able to alter the emotional associations of memories mice by using a technique called optogenetics, which involves shining lights...

Sex and back pain

13 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The karma-sutra for back pain may soon be arriving. Within the UK and abroad, there are striking percentages of men and women that report experiencing...

Mental health support online

10 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Something bothering you? Don't want to visit a doctor to talk about your problems? An online tool called 'myGRiST' due to be released early next year ...

EPSRC's Rising Stars

09 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

From 'plastic' solar panels to flexible electronics, and quantum mechanics to regenerative medicine, we found out about the exciting research of the n...

Unlocking Stonehenge's secrets

08 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Previously undiscovered monuments surrounding the stone circle have been found, using highly advanced geophysical tools and laser scanners in order to...

Sudden death in athletes

08 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

You may have heard reports of seemingly healthy young athletes suddenly dropping down dead in the middle of a game. Professor Paulus Kirchhoff from th...

Bereavement suppresses the Immune System

08 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever heard of someone dying of a broken heart? In fact, it is remarkably common for elderly people who were previously healthy to die soon af...

Parkinson's 'pocket-doctor'

08 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

A 'pocket-doctor' smartphone app may now help to diagnose Parkinson's, a degenerative motor disease, that was previously very difficult to assess. Wit...

Your Immune system vs Cancer

07 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Cancer is one of the world's biggest killers, and current treatments often have terrible side effects. So scientists have begun looking into ways to h...

Colour changing cuttlefish

07 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Octopuses and cuttlefish are well known for their astonishing ability to change colour almost instantaneously. Can we copy this system to create a cam...

The problem with passports

26 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever seen somebody in the street and thought you know them, until you get closer and realise it's a different person entirely. Matching faces...

A Wired Society

19 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Memory boosting drugs, the military, the legal system and enhancing athletes mental focus and muscle tone. Where should neuroscience stop? How a revol...

Star dust

19 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Stardust returns Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The evolution of the British peppered moth

19 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Ilik Saccheri and Arjen Van 't Hof of the University of Liverpool describe how the British Peppered Moth change...

Our leaky ancestor

18 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Going back through the generations, eventually you come to the ancestor of all life on earth, something scientists call LUCA (last universal common an...

How to make energy from oil-eating microbes

08 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

One of the remarkable things about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico four years ago was the fact that a lot of the contamination w...

Remembering to live to a ripe old age

05 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Hello I'm Naked Scientist Hannah Critchlow and I'm concerned about aging. Alzheimer's disease affects around half a million of us in the UK alone, and...