Stay ConnectedThe Nature Podcast brings you the best stories from the world of science each week. We cover everything from astronomy to zoology, highlighting the most exciting research from each issue of the Nature journal. We meet the scientists behind the results and provide in-depth analysis from Nature‘s award-winning journalists.
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In this episode:
Since 1988, cases of polio have fallen by more than 99%, and many observers predict that the disease could be eradicated within the next three years. However, eradication isn’t the same as extinction, so the next challenge is for researchers to make sure the disease won’t return. We discuss what a post-polio future may look like, and how to ensure that the disease is gone for good.
News Feature: Polio is on the brink of eradication. Here's how to keep it from coming back
Botulinum toxin shows promise in treating a common disorder in older people, and how safeguarding seabirds may require significantly larger conservation-areas than previously thought.
Research Highlight: Botox’s paralysing effects can relieve an uncontrolled head tremor
Research Highlight: Seabirds’ lonely travels pose a conservation challenge
How demand for research monkeys is fuelling an illegal trade in smuggled animals, and the surprising observation that may help explain mysterious space explosions.
Nature: How wild monkeys ‘laundered’ for science could undermine research
Nature News: Mysterious ‘Tasmanian devil’ space explosion baffles astronomers
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In the latest episode of Nature hits the books, writer and researcher Jay Owens joins us to discuss her book Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles.
Much like dust itself, Jay’s book travels the globe, looking at the impacts that these microscopic particles are having on the world, our health and environment, as well as exploring the role that humanity has played in creating them.
Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles Jay Owens Hodder & Stoughton (2023)
Music supplied by Airae/Epidemic Sound/Getty images.
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3D printers are capable of producing complex shapes, but making functioning objects from multiple materials in a single print-run has proved challenging. To overcome this, a team has combined inkjet printing with an error-correction system guided by machine vision, to allow them to print sophisticated multi-material objects. They used this method to make a bio-inspired robotic hand that combines soft and rigid plastics to make mechanical bones, ligaments, and tendons, as well as a pump based on a mammalian heart.
Research article: Buchner et al.
News & Views: Multi-material 3D printing guided by machine vision
Video: The 3D printer that crafts complex robotic organs in a single run
Citizen-scientists help identify an astronomical object that blurs the line between asteroid and comet, and how a Seinfeld episode helped scientists to distinguish the brain regions involved in understanding and appreciating humour.
Research Highlight: Citizen scientists find a rarity: an asteroid trying to be a comet
Research Highlight: One brain area helps you to enjoy a joke — but another helps you to get it
Type 2 diabetes affects hundreds of millions of people around the world and represents a significant burden on healthcare systems. But behaviour change programmes — also known as lifestyle interventions — could potentially play a large role in preventing people from developing type 2 diabetes. This week in Nature a new paper assesses how effective this kind of intervention might be. Looking at a huge amount of data from the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme, the paper concludes that these interventions represent a viable diabetes prevention strategy.
Research article: Lemp et al.
News & Views: Diabetes prevention programme put to the test
How marine heatwaves revved up crabs’ metabolisms until they starved, and the AI-powered, robot chemist that could extract oxygen from water on Mars.
Wired: The Surprising Reason Sea Creatures Are Getting Hungrier
Nature News: This AI robot chemist could make oxygen on Mars
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Amphotericin B is a drug used to treat life-threatening fungal infections. But while it is effective against many fungal species, it is also extremely toxic to kidneys, meaning it is mostly used as a drug of last-resort. This week, a team has unpicked the mechanism behind the drug’s toxicity, allowing them to modify it and reduce side effects in human kidney cells. The researchers hope this new version of the drug could become a useful tool in fighting fungal diseases.
Research article: Maji et al.
Reconstructing woolly rhino DNA using samples from fossilized hyena dung, and a soft robot that can perform surgery inside a beating heart.
Research Highlight: Woolly-rhino genome emerges from cave hyena’s fossilized poo
Research Highlight: A robot performs heart surgery with a strong but delicate touch
Phosphorus is a vital element for life and for planet formation, but although abundant in the inner part of the Milky Way, it has been undetected in the outer regions of our Galaxy. Now, researchers have identified phosphorus-containing molecules huge distances from Earth, although exactly how this phosphorus was created is unclear. The team suspect that lower-mass stars are behind the phosphorus generation, and believe that the detection of the element could broaden the range of planets that may be habitable in our Galaxy.
Research article: Koelemay et al.
What Osiris-REx’s hypersonic capsule return could teach researchers about asteroids hitting Earth’s atmosphere, and the genetic studies that could help restore the genomes of Scotland’s endangered ‘Highland tigers’.
Nature News: Asteroid sampler’s hypersonic return thrilled scientists: here’s what they learnt
Nature News: How to keep wildcats wild: ancient DNA offers fresh insights
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In the past year, generative AIs have been taking the world by storm. ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E and more, are changing the nature of how content is produced. In science, they could help transform and streamline publishing. However, they also come with plenty of risks.
In this episode of Nature's Take we discuss how these AIs are impacting science and what the future might hold.
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Severe muscle injury can be debilitating, with long recuperation periods. Now, researchers have developed a material that can be directly injected into injured muscle, helping to stimulate and heal damaged tissue. The team showed this approach could rapidly restore walking ability in severely injured rats and regenerate muscles within four weeks. They hope that this solution could one day help humans with similar injuries, and overcome some of the limitations of current recuperation strategies.
Research article: Jin et al.
News and Views: Hydrogel implant rehabilitates muscles through electrical stimulation
Ancient human genomes fill in a missing link between Europe’s first humans and later arrivals, and how ferns are inspiring pest-resistant crops.
Research Highlight: Ancient DNA reveals traces of elusive first humans in Europe
Research Highlight: Fierce ferns make insect-fighting proteins
Largest release of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes shows promise at controlling dengue, and the genes that explain why starfish aren’t so symmetrical.
Nature News: Dengue rates drop after release of modified mosquitoes in Colombia
Video: How would a starfish wear trousers? Science has an answer
Research Article: Formery et al.
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For decades, BMI — calculated by dividing weight by height squared — has been as an international standard to determine healthy weights.
However, BMI does not measure body fat, and ignores many other factors that can affect how healthy someone it.
Now, a small but growing movement of reseachers and clinicians are calling for other metrics to be used in conjunction with BMI when diagnosing and treating obesity.
This is an audio version of our Feature: Why BMI is flawed — and how to redefine obesity
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For years, researchers have been listening to Mars and the quakes that ripple through it, to understand the planet's internal structure and uncover its history. But often these results have left more questions than answers. Now, though, new research published in Nature reveals the composition and size of Mars's core, finding that it is much smaller than previously thought.
Research Article: Khan et al.
Research Article: Samuel et al.
News and Views: Deep Mars is surprisingly soft
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To prevent the loss of wildlife, forest restoration is key, but monitoring how well biodiversity actually recovers is incredibly difficult. Now though, a team have collected recordings of animal sounds to determine the extent of the recovery. However, while using these sounds to identify species is an effective way to monitor, it’s also labour intensive. To overcome this, they trained an AI to listen to the sounds, and found that although it was less able to identify species, its findings still correlated well with wildlife recovery, suggesting that it could be a cost-effective and automated way to monitor biodiversity.
Research article: Müller et al.
Researchers develop algae-based living materials that glow when squeezed, and a 50-million-year-old bat skull that suggests echolocation was an ancient skill.
Research Highlight: Give these ‘living composite’ objects a squeeze and watch them glow
Research Highlight: Fossilized skull shows that early bats had modern sonar
A brain imaging study reveals how high-fat foods exert their powerful pull, and how being asleep doesn’t necessarily cut you off from the outside world.
Nature News: Deep asleep? You can still follow simple commands, study finds
Nature News: Milkshake neuroscience: how the brain nudges us toward fatty foods
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To protect themselves against viral infection, bacteria often use CRISPR-Cas systems to identify and destroy an invading virus’s genetic material. But viruses aren’t helpless and can deploy countermeasures, known as anti-CRISPRs, to neutralise host defences. This week, a team describe a new kind of anti-CRISPR system, based on RNA, which protects viruses by mimicking part of the CRISPR-Cas system. The researchers hope that this discovery could have future biotechnology applications, including making CRISPR-Cas genome editing more precise.
Research article: Camara-Wilpert et al.
Carved inscriptions suggest a queen named Thyra was the most powerful person in Viking-age Denmark, and the discovery of a puffed-up exoplanet that has just 1.5% the density of Earth.
Research Highlight: Runes on Viking stones speak to an ancient queen’s power
Research Highlight: ‘Super-puff’ planet is one of the fluffiest worlds ever found
Climate-change induced melting of Greenland’s vast ice sheet would contribute to 7m of sea level rise. But it has been difficult to calculate how the ice sheet will respond to future warming. This week, a team suggest that abrupt ice loss is likely if the global mean temperature is between 1.7 °C and 2.3 °C above pre-industrial levels. Keeping temperature rise below 1.5 °C could mitigate ice loss, if done within a few centuries, but even a short overshoot of the estimated threshold could lead to several metres of sea-level rise.
Research article: Bochow et al.
A massive reproducibility exercise reveals over 200 ecologists get wildly-diverging results from the same data, and how melting simulated lunar-dust with lasers could help pave the Moon.
Nature News: Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
Nature News: How to build Moon roads using focused beams of sunlight
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