Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

The Great Barrier Reef is a huge system of over 3,800 individual coral reefs - making it the largest coral reef system on earth. Located off the northeastern coast of Australia, it is home to thousands of species. However, in recent years, the Great Barrier Reef has come under threat. Rising sea temperatures have led to a number of problems, including mass coral bleaching, and a huge increase in the number of crown-of-thorns starfish, which eat corals. Now, a new study has shown that some reefs may be more important than others, in terms of the recovery of the Great Barrier Reef. Lewis Thomson... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The complex branching patterns seen in the growth of tissues in the lungs, kidneys and pancreas have an elegantly simple mathematical solution... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

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

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

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

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

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