Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

On Tuesday the UK Space Agency's first official astronaut, Tim Peake embarked on the trip of a lifetime to the International Space Station. The launch was broadcast live on the BBC and watched around the world. Connie Orbach went to join the celebrations at the Science Museum in London... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

What was the most momentous bit of science that you heard about this year? Every December the journal Science asks its editorial staff this question and they eventually crown one discovery their "Breakthrough of the Year". Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

A plant protein used to communicate with friendly soil fungi has been identified by Cambridge University scientists. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How an Acorn grew into, amongst other things, an Apple: What began as a business making home microcomputers now turns out the processing brain behind 95% of the world's smartphones. Mike Muller has been at the firm since its inception; he explained to Graihagh Jackson how he and 11 other engineers turned the business into one of the world's largest tech firms... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Researchers have linked a gene with your ability to stop smoking, but not all of the scientific community is in agreement... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

People with the best social networks, who sing in choirs; play instruments; go to church and take part in team sports, all live longer and tend to be happier, studies have shown. People who feel lonely, or isolated, on the other hand, fare less well and are more prone to ill-health. Now a new study, published this week in the journal PNAS and examining the immune systems of lonely people and monkeys has revealed why this might be. John Capitanio revealed all to Chris Smith... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Compulsive sexual behaviour, more commonly known as sex addiction, is driven by the huge novelty provided by online material, a new study has found. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The choices we make are often down to past experience and the circumstances, including picking partners. However, for a bird called the ruff, the way it picks up ladies is determined genetically. Some ruffs are territorial and impress using dramatic neck feathers. Less common are the 'girlfriend stealers' who display on the edge of territories and attempt to lure females away. Finally, female mimics or 'cross dressers' approach mates in disguise. Jon Slate from the University of Sheffield explains to Felicity Bedford how genetics played a part in the evolution of these complex behavioural... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Music can have a huge impact on your emotions. Research published this week in PNAS has shown that if you apply the same sound properties that convey emotion in music and voices to environmental sounds such as a car engine they will also make people feel emotional. Daniel Bowling, a neuroscientist from the University of Vienna spoke to Rosalind Davies about what the researchers had done, and what these sound properties are. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Can you remember when your voice broke? According to conventional wisdom most men can't, but women have very strong memories of their first period. This means that studies of puberty timing have struggled to investigate effects in men. However, new work from the University of Cambridge has shown that men have much more reliable memories than once thought as Dr Felix Day explained to Connie Orbach. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Cambridge has a rich history of making discoveries about DNA - the genetic code inside each and every one of us. In the 50s Watson and Crick announced that they had unravelled the structure of DNA - the famous double helix shape. Now, 60 years later, another Cambridge scientist - Bill Amos - has made a further DNA discovery - this time about the way the genetic code changes or mutates to allow evolution to happen, as he explained to Graihagh Jackson. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Back in August we did a show all about the super material graphene. At the molecular level, a sheet of graphene looks a bit like chicken wire and is only a single atomic layer thick, if you were to pile up lots of these single layers you'd get graphite, just like the led in a pencil. For the first time in the UK more than 40 companies from around the world came together to show the latest in graphene related technologies. Connie Orbach went along to see what she could find and started by talking to Gaute Juliussen from the graphine production company Graphitene. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

At the beginning of November, Kat went up to Liverpool for the annual NCRI Cancer Conference, bringing together scientists, doctors, nurses, patients and more from the UK and around the world to talk about the latest progress, ideas and issues in cancer research. On the first night, the charity Breast Cancer Now hosted a heated debate discussing whether after spending so much money investigating the causes of breast cancer as well as treating it, it's now time to focus efforts on preventing the disease in the first place. Sarah Hazell, Senior Research Manager at Breast Cancer Now, gave Kat a... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Respiratory syncytial virus or RSV is a virus of the respiratory system that infects people of all ages during the winter causing colds, however in infants and young children it can lead to much more severe illnesses like pneumonia. Despite it's huge global impact we still don't have a vaccine for RSV and Dr Ruth Karron from John Hopkins University explains why to Chris Smith. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

E-cigarettes seem to be everywhere nowadays. Invented by a Chinese pharmacist and patented in 2004, they first went on sale in 2010 and are now the most popular way to quit smoking in the UK. But although there's no smoke, there's certainly a fire of controversy around e-cigs, as Kat Arney found out when she spoke to Linda Bauld, professor of health policy at the University of Stirling, who chaired a panel discussion about e-cigarettes at the NCRI Cancer Conference. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Cataracts are caused when proteins inside the lens of the eye come together. It's a condition that clouds the vision of approximately one hundred and eighty million people worldwide, with surgery to replace the lens with a plastic one currently the only solution. Twenty million sufferers around the world are blind because they cannot access surgical treatments. But help could be on it's way, as a potential non-surgical treatment method has been described in the journal Science this week. It follows another advancement in cataract science published recently in Nature. Roy Quinlan from the... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Despite the hundreds of thousands of babies born every day, we still know relatively little about childbirth and how hormones play their key roles in it. A stress hormone, known as cortisol, is involved in inducing labour in animals, but doesn't seem to work the same way in people. A paper this week published in Science Signalling has suggested a potential way cortisol does have a part to play in human childbirth. Georgia Mills caught up with Professor Joe Herbert, from Cambridge University, to discuss the study. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As Winter approaches in some parts of the world, so does the colder weather and the threat of ice on the roads and on your car windscreen. But help is at hand from Kansas State University's Alexander van Dyke. As he explains to Charis Lestrange, he's created what's known as a "biphilic" material that can stop frost from forming so easily on a surface. It consists of two types of material: one hydrophilic, which attracts water, and the other hydrophobic, or water-repelling. Placed in a certain pattern, these can keep water droplets moving so they don't have time to freeze... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Steel is used to manufacture a wide range of products from tiny surgical tools to huge ships. However, it can become corroded or contaminated when liquid comes into contact with it. A new method to coat steel with the compound tungsten oxide has been reported by researchers from Harvard University in Nature Communications this week. It enables liquid to slip off the surface while keeping the steel strong. Dr Ben de Laune, a materials chemist from the University of Birmingham, explains to Rosalind Davies why this is so important. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

There have been many exaggerated reports this week that birth order, whether you are a first or last born, affects how intelligent you will be compared to your siblings. However, the researchers at the University of Leipzig found that this difference in intelligence is very small and the more important finding was about birth order and personality. Charis Lestrange spoke with lead author Julia Rohrer to find out more. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists