Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

As the saying goes, "if you don't learn from the past you're doomed to repeat it," or words to that effect; which is why understanding what has happened to the Earth's climate in the past is critical if we are to make accurate predictions about our the effects of climate change in future. So how might clams help? Well, they are among the oldest living animals on Earth, surviving for 500 years in some cases. Georgia Mills spoke to lead researcher David Reynolds from Cardiff University... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Carbon monoxide poisoning is the common form of poisoning worldwide. Just in the US tens of thousands of people are killed or hospitalised every year by this odourless and colourless gas, which in is boiler, stove and vehicle exhausts and is also produced during house fires. At the moment, the only treatment is oxygen, but it's not very effective and often is administered too late. Now researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed an antidote molecule that can circulate in the bloodstream and pull the carbon monoxide from tissues to make it safe. Mark Gladwin told Chris Smith how... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

An area of rainforest the size of Panama is lost every year to deforestation and we know habitat loss is probably the leading factor driving extinction today. However, another potential problem could be an increase in certain disease-causing organisms which benefit from the changing habitat. Ecosystems are complex and changes to the conditions each species needs to survive can impact on each other and throw it out of balance. Aaron Morris, from Bournemouth University and the IRD in France, has been looking at how changes in the local environment have affected populations of the bacterium... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Dark energy, the mysterious unknown entity which permeates all of space makes up 68% of the universe's total energy. Despite being such a large proportion of existence we still can't directly detect it. An international group of scientists is trying to map dark energy in our night sky. But how do you map something that you can't see and what precisely is dark energy? Liam Messin spoke to Joe Zuntz from the University of Edinburgh who is involved in the project Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

2D materials are objects that are only one or two atoms thick. Graphene is the most well known of these but many incredibly thin substances exist. These exotic materials are strong, flexible, semi-transparent and great conductors of electricity. But before they can be used in novel technologies we need efficient ways of making them. Graphite, as found in pencil leads, is made up of many layers of graphene and to isolate graphene all these layers have to be peeled away one by one until only a single layer is left. Researchers at UCL have found a new method of obtaining single 2D sheets from... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We've just come to the end of anti-bullying week and with 25,000 children using Childline's counselling sessions in 2015 to talk about bulling it clearly is still a problem for the UK. This problem appears to go beyond playground trauma with research published this week showing that bullied children are more likely to be overweight at age 18. The study's lead author, Jessie Baldwin, explained to Liam Messin what they did Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Malaria parasites in Cambodia are showing resistance to the front line drug Piperaquine making current treatment useless and putting lives at risk. Dr Roberto Amato, and his team, uncovered the genetic basis for this resistance; he took Liam Messin through the study starting with how they collected parasite samples Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

When you were little did you ever dream of becoming an astronaut? Well Michael Foale did and he actually made it happen. Born in the UK Foale completed both his undergraduate and doctorate degrees in Cambridge before joining NASA and going on to become the most experienced UK-born astronaut. Well he was back in Cambridge to talk about his experiences at a Pint of Science event and Connie Orbach went along to find out how a UK lad got to be a NASA astronaut... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Quantum mechanics describes the properties of light, atoms and the even smaller particles inside atoms, like electrons and protons. On these tiny scales, we observe strange effects that contradict our everyday experience and we are beginning to harness these effects to build technologies that seemed impossible before. Kerstin Gpfrich went to the 2016 National Quantum Technologies Showcase in London to find out about the latest quantum leaps in quantum technology. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Compared to a lot of the objects in our solar system the Earth's Moon is a bit unusual. A new theory, published in the journal Nature, explains how the Moon got to where it is today. Professor David Rothery, from the Open University, wasn't on the paper but he took Liam through what Matja Cuk, the study's lead author had done. He started by explaining what makes the Moon such a space oddity... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Plants can be good for the planet, nice to look at and often pretty tasty. But what if they were also high tech sensors that we could harness to detect harmful chemicals and even explosives in groundwater or the air around them? Michael Strano and his group from MIT have produced just such a "bionic" plant by engineering spinach plants to produce more, or less, infrared light in the presence of certain chemicals. Connie Orbach heard how... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The Paris agreement is an international climate change treaty signed earlier this year by 192 countries and it aims to mitigate man-made global warming. It kicks in from this week. But will its targets be sufficient? Over half of the Arctic sea ice area has been lost in the past 40 years and we may yet lose all of it. That's according to a new study from the Max Plank Institute for Metrology in Hamburg. Kerstin Gpfrich spoke to study's author Dirk Notz. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Now is there anybody out there? Or should I say is there anybody out there? Graihagh Jackson phones home to BBC broadcaster Dallas Campbell Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Conditions like Down's Syndrome, which are caused by babies carrying the wrong numbers of chromosomes in their cells, affect about one pregnancy in every 500. There are also many other inherited disorders that run in families but can't be diagnosed without a sample of the developing baby's DNA to test. But obtaining that DNA is risky; pregnant women have to undergo tests like an amniocentesis, where a needle is used to obtain cells from around the baby. When doctors do this, there can be up to a one per cent risk that the woman will have a miscarriage. These tests also cannot be performed... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

White lies are widely accepted as an integral part of our everyday lives. And yet history has taught us how a series of small transgressions can snowball with detrimental outcomes. But can we really get desensitised to lying, and if so, what happens in our brains? Tali Sharot from University College London answered this question in her new study and Kerstin Gpfrich wanted to know more about it... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

When most people think of dinosaurs they'll likely conjure up images of the stabbing teeth of the T-rex or the cutting claws of a Velociraptor but what about the squishy bits of dinosaurs? To find out more Liam Messin went to the University of Cambridge's Earth Science Department to speak with Dr Alex Liu. Alex was co-author of a recent study detailing a fossilised dinosaur brain. Liam started by asking Alex precisely what he and his colleagues have described in the paper Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

According to the Office for National Statistics, the ONS, in England and Wales deaths involving heroin and morphine have more than double since 2012. The ONS say this is partially driven by a rise in heroin purity and availability over the last three years. Age, they say, is also a factor because heroin users are getting older and they often have other conditions, such as lung disease and hepatitis that make them particularly vulnerable. But are these the only reasons? John Middleton, president of the UK's faculty of public health, in an editorial in this week's British Medical Journal,... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We all know that men aren't really from Mars and women aren't really from Venus, we are both from Earth and there are more similarities between sexes and genders than there are differences. But, even after many decades of campaigning there are still issues with gender equality across many areas of life from equal pay for equal work to shared parental leave or even just differences in ways of working. One topic that's really important to us here at the Naked Scientists is the balance of men and women in STEM research, that's Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, so to delve into this a... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

On the 13th of October Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge turned 250 years old. As an established teaching hospital, it trains hundreds of medical students with the final three years their time spent on clinical placements. Connie Orbach went to meet up with some of these students to hear how they're getting on. Starting with 4th year Keerthi Senthil who Connie grabbed on his lunch break, only weeks into his first placement on the wards... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Over 35 million people worldwide are living with HIV. Treatments cost billions and don't come without significant side effects for the individual. Now, researchers from Emroy University may have found a new drug duo to eliminate the need for debilitating lifelong HIV treatments. Kerstin Gpfrich spoke to Prof Aftab Ansari to find out how it works... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists