Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

What if the next refrigeration technology could be based on twisting and untwisting strands? A new paper published in Science by an international team of researchers explored how twisting and stretching can change the temperature of certain types of fibres, leading them to propose a new method for building fridges that are more efficient and more environmentally friendly than those used at present. Mariana Marasoiu untangled the findings with study lead author Ray Baughman... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Can we help people who've lost a leg to feel it again? Mariana Marasoiu has this report... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month, doctors doing U-turns: the medical practices without much evidence to prop them up, wind-tunnel experiments reveal how geese fly at extreme altitudes, why mating makes bees go blind, stress remodelling the brain's myelin, and what goes on during a stint aboard the International Space Station? Join Chris Smith for a look inside the latest papers in eLife... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Mobile phone companies could be set to erect bigger and taller phone masts as part of government plans to roll out 5G networks and improve coverage in rural areas. How might taller masts help with connectivity - and what is 5G anyway? Tech-xpert and Angel Investor Peter Cowley explains to Chris Smith and Katie Haylor... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to many of the agents we use to deal with them, including antiseptics. The bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii is one example and causes hard to treat skin, chest, and urine infections in hospitals. Now, a team at the University of Newcastle, Australia have discovered a gene that renders Acinetobacter resistant to the chemical chlorhexidine that's used in hand disinfectants. But the gene evolved long before the antiseptic was invented, so what was it doing previously? As well as finding out, Adam Murphy also heard from lead author Karl Hassan how the... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

A research team from Virginia Tech, led by Ryan Pollyea, has found that earthquakes 8 kilometres below the earth's surface are increasing in intensity. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the team's work has found that a super-dense liquid called oilfield wastewater is seeping deep into the sheets of the earth, causing massive pressure changes that could be increasing earthquake intensity. Matthew Hall got into contact with Ryan Pollyea and Martin Chapman from Virginia Tech to see what all the rumble is about... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

A heatwave has been sweeping across Europe recently, causing record temperatures across the continent and creating a lot of consternation in the Naked Scientist office. But where do heatwaves come from. And what's going to happen in the future. Adam Murphy spoke to Manoj Joshi, professor of climate dynamics from the University of East Anglia, starting with what a heatwave even is. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Your genome contains all of your genetic information, and it's pretty long - the Human Genome Project estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. But according to synthetic biology, you can survive on only 473 genes! At least a very simple bacterium can. Of this "minimal genome", scientists previously didn't know what nearly a third actually did. Now Mark Wass has been telling Heather Jameson how his team at the University of Kent may have cracked 66 of the mystery genes... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The world's largest patch of seaweed appears every summer in the mid-Atlantic. And since 2011, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt has been growing to even more monstrous sizes - thousands of kilometres long - and it's been clogging up beaches along the Americas with metres of stinking brown goo. Now, scientists in Florida and Georgia have used satellite tracking to figure out what's going on - as Phil Sansom explains... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The nervous system is a complicated network of specialised cells - neurons - that transfer information from one part of the body to another. To help our understanding of the nervous system in humans, scientists have mapped every neuron and every connection in a type of roundworm called C. elegans. Emma Hildyard asked Scott Emmons how this map was created and what it could mean... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

You might remember from a year or so ago stories of an alien fly-by. The unidentified object was famously referred to as Oumuamua, which means "scout" in Hawaiian. Now a paper just out in the journal Nature Astronomy has revisited the story to probe whether Oumuamua really is alien technology, or just a cigar-shaped hunk of rock hurtling through the solar system. Matthew Hall got in touch with co-author Dr. Alan Fitzsimmons from Queens University Belfast... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

In June, Izzie Clarke explored the extremely fast science of speed and headed to the race tracks with McLaren in their 600LT Spider supercar. But whilst Formula 1 and petrol racing have a huge fan base, we're also seeing the rise of electric racing, Formula E. In this bonus interview, Izzie spoke with Rodi Basso, Motorsport Director of Mclaren Applied Technologies, about the future of the sport. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

With a rising global population, and the impending impacts of climate change, we need more food, and reliable food sources safeguarded for the future. But varying light levels mean that plant growing conditions aren't always consistent, as Katie Haylor has been finding out... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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