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Naked Scientists, In Short Special Editions Podcast — Life Sciences
Naked Scientists, In Short Special Editions Podcast

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.

Copyright: © The Naked Scientists

Latest Episodes:

Boaty McBoatface and the Antarctic mystery Jun 27, 2019

Show notes

In March 2016 the public voted to name a new polar research vessel "Boaty McBoatface", ultimately though, it was decided that "RRS Sir David Attenborough" was a more fitting choice. But the name "Boaty McBoatface" lived on and was instead given to one of the ship's autonomous submarine vehicles. And this week data from Boaty's first research mission in Antarctica has revealed a worrying new mechanism related to rising sea levels. Boaty has discovered that winds above the southern ocean, which have been strengthening in recent years, due in part to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Smarter, safer robots Jun 26, 2019

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Robots are increasingly used to take over repetitive tasks in industry and agriculture, but they are still limited in what they can do. This also means that humans still need to work alongside them and often things can go badly wrong. 13000 injuries and 60 deaths were caused by accidents due to contact with machinery between 2014-18 in the UK alone. Engineers are working on ways to make robots safer, cheaper and more efficient. Ankita Anirban speaks to Matthias Althoff from the Technical University of Munich, in Germany, about his recent work on modular robots. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Fish: a small world after all Jun 25, 2019

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The world is facing a global fish issue - a fissue, if you will. One third of all fish stocks are being overfished, and most of the efforts to prevent this involve exclusive zones in the ocean managed by individual countries. But a study released this week shows how the world's fisheries are all closely connected in a "small-world" network, and how overfishing in one zone can affect all of its neighbours. Izzie Clarke spoke with James Rising from the London School of Economics to find out how. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Asthma: mapping the human lung Jun 24, 2019

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The chest disease asthma is becoming more common. It can lead to life-threatening breathing difficulties when the airways constrict and the lung tissue overproduces mucus; this is usually an allergic reaction that can be worsened by air pollution. But our understanding of what's going on in an asthmatic lung is still quite limited. But now for the first time, scientists at the Sanger Institute near Cambridge have used a new technique to document and examine every cell in lung samples from both healthy and asthmatic patients, to discover what's changing when a person develops asthma. Chris... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Cracking the secret of Antarctic ice holes Jun 21, 2019

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Large holes in Antarctic sea ice remain a mystery to scientists despite their discovery over four decades ago. These vast areas of unfrozen water, often referred to as polynyas which is a russian term for natural ice hole, were first spotted in Antarctica's Weddell Sea during the 1970's. They can grow as large as New Zealand and last anywhere between 3 weeks to 3 years. To better understand the phenomenon, oceanographers from the University of Washington led by Ethan Campbell have analyzed decades of data on polynya development, specifically data from two polynyas that formed in 2016 and 2017.... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Pitch perception - a special skill? Jun 21, 2019

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When it comes to understanding how the brain functions, scientists have done a great deal of work on studying macaque monkeys, our evolutionary relative. We share 93% of our DNA and in a lot of ways, our brains are very similar. Even for high level operations such as learning, memory and decision-making, our brains work in comparable ways.. However, when it comes to sound, scientists have discovered that humans seem to have a unique edge in how we perceive pitch. Ankita Anirban spoke to Bevil Conway, from the National Institute of Health in Maryland, on his recent work comparing how humans and... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Recyclable crisp packets using nanotechnology Jun 20, 2019

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At the end of 2018 Walkers launched their own recycling scheme for crisp packets after more than 300,000 people signed an online petition demanding that they change to a fully recyclable material for their packaging. Crisp packets are made from plastic coated with a thin layer of metal. The metal layer is essential to prolong the shelf life of the food by providing a barrier to oxygen and water, but it makes the packets very difficult to recycle.Aiming to tackle this problem is Dermot O'Hare and his team at the University of Oxford, who have developed a new coating using nano-technology which,... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Higher fatal flu risk for CRISPR twins Jun 12, 2019

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CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Long name, but easy to picture: the sequence is synonymous to a word processor for a book, the book being DNA, which allows scientists to not only read the book, but to also edit a specific 'passage' of the book. Using CRISPR technology, DNA edits were performed on female twin embryos by Chinese scientist Jiankui He, who has since lost his standing in the scientific community. Xinzhu Wei & Rasmus Nielsen, from the University of California Berkeley, followed up with the birth of the twins in an article published in... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How to mend a broken heart Jun 11, 2019

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Around 1.4 million people alive in the UK today have survived a heart attack, but survivors can suffer from debilitating heart failure, because the heart is damaged during the attack. Ten years ago The Naked Scientists spoke to Sian Harding from Imperial College London about some promising new "heart patches" that could be grown in the lab. Ten years on, production is more reliable and plentiful, and it's hoped that safety trials on humans could begin within the next couple of years. Heather Jameson spoke to Sian to learn more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

An antibiotic made from metal Jun 10, 2019

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Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria evolve to sidestep the drugs we use to kill them. With resistance rising, we could be facing an "antibiotic apocalypse", where even trivial infections become untreatable. What's worse, almost no new antibiotics are being developed by the major pharmaceutical companies. Now, though, Kirsty Smitten has uncovered a new option based on the heavy metal ruthenium. It can destroy antibiotic resistant bacteria, including those known as gram negatives, traditionally regarded as much harder to treat... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

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