Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

A favourite Easter tradition are hot cross buns, but there's one particular ingredient which no bread can do without: yeast. What is about this strange powdery ingredient that makes it so useful? Philip Garsed took some freshly baked hot cross buns to molecular biologiest Lia Chappell to find out. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

If you've ever seen huge flocks of birds or a shoal of fish, you might have wondered how they are all able to move together without ever colliding. Now scientists at the University of Bristol believe they have been able to explain how flocks of bats are able to avoid collisions, by using just a few simple traffic rules. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Anyone who has struggled with a lousy WiFi connection in a busy public space knows only too well that there are limits to how much data can be beamed over the airwaves like this. Now scientists have come up with a new technology that uses the room lighting to transmit data: effectively by causing the lights to blink billions of times per second using a form of visual morse code. Mark Peplow spoke to Chris Smith and shed some light on the process... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Geologists like to divide up history into epochs, or eras, separated by events that leave an indelible mark in the geological record of the earth - for example, the meteorite strike that finished off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, whose impact is written in rocks across the globe. Similarly we humans have made our own irreversible impact on the planet, ushering in what's become known as the anthropocene era. But when did it actually start? Simon Lewis spoke to Kat Arney about how he's has been figuring it out. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

In a remote area in the Andes mountain there exist perilously high levels of arsenic: one of the most toxic substances known to man. But people have been living there for thousands of years, and it has now been discovered that this population has adapted to this dangerous environment. The group have a DNA mutation associated with a fast metabolism- this means they can flush arsenic out of their system much more quickly than most people. Georgia Mills spoke to researcher Karin Broberg to find out more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Dr Kat Arney meets Sophie the Stegosaurus, and Natural History Museum researcher Charlotte Brassey. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

After a seven and a half year journey, and with a price tag just shy of half a billion Dollars, NASA's Dawn spacecraft finally has the asteroid Ceres in its sights. Ceres is a massive asteroid which sits among a clutch of much smaller boulders, pebbles and dust out beyond the orbit of Mars. This field of debris is the rocky rubble left over from the time when the inner planets, including the Earth, were first forming, about 4 and a half billion years ago. This means asteroids like Ceres can help to uncover the origins of Earth and the minerals and materials, including the water, that we have... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

FameLab is a competition where scientists battle it out to be the best at giving engaging short talks on their favourite areas of research. Six Cambridge-based finalists have been chosen by a panel of judges and we're hearing from a selection of them. In this episode we meet Daphne Ezer and hear about the fascinating (and terrifying) snapping shrimp... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Using a new super powerful electron microscope, scientists have discovered tiny holes are responsible for giving brown diamonds their colour. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Worms are about to help scientists to boldly go where no researcher has been before, by venturing into space to help us to understand how changes in gravity might affect our DNA. Although scientists don't think that the physical genetic letters of DNA can be altered by low-gravity space travel, or living on the Moon or another planet, there are signs that chemical markers, called epigenetic modifications, which control the activity of certain genes and can be passed on from parents to their offspring, can be altered by exposure to low gravity environments. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

It makes up most of the stuff in our universe, but we can't see it or weigh it - but we know it has to be there. This elusive substance is dark matter, and according to a new paper in the journal Nature Physics this week, it's all around us in our own galaxy - the Milky Way. To find out more about dark matter, and what this new map of the dark matter in our galaxy might tell us, Kat Arney went to speak to UCL astrophysicist Chamkaur Ghag, who's working on ways to detect dark matter here on earth. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Has anyone ever told you to lose a few pounds? Get a bit more active? Work harder in school? We can sometimes become a bit defensive when given this type of advice even if we know it's probably the right thing to do. Now scientists have revealed how a simple activity - called self-affirmation - can improve the way we react to this type of advice, which can have positive effects on our health. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

A novel approach to detecting interactions between scorpion venom and its target molecule could aid in the discovery of new drugs for treatment of a wide range of nerve disorders. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Your brain is more complex and powerful than the world's biggest supercomputer, built while you're a baby growing in the womb from the recipes encoded in your genes. But how do your growing brain cells know which genes to use? The answer comes from epigenetic modifications - the special chemical markers that are put on your genes that help cells switch them on or off at the right time and in the right place. Helen Spiers from Kings College London has been finding out how these epigenetic changes are involved in building the brain, and how they could explain some of the differences between... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

What are so-called "3 parent embryos", and what are the arguments for allowing it? Hannah Critchlow discussed the issues with MP Julian Huppert, who supported the recent motion to permit the process in the House of Commons... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Around 250 million years ago our world was a very different place. Rather than the different continents we know today, there was only one giant land mass - Pangea - covered with plants and animals. But then something went horribly wrong. Over a few million years, more than 95 per cent of all species on the early earth were wiped out in an event known as the Permian mass extinction. So what caused it? One researcher who thinks he might know is Mark Sephton from Imperial College London and, as he explained to Kat Arney, this wasn't the first time that our world has come to the brink of disaster. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Humans do it. Primates do it. And now it's been found out that birds can also do it - 3 day old chickens have been shown to order numbers low to high, from left to right - just like on a ruler! The findings, published in Science, could indicate that this numerical ability is a feature of evolution, rather than culture - and could help explain why we pay more attention to things presented to our left... Zoologist Hannah Rowland from the University of Cambridge put Graihagh Jackson's numerical skills to the test... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Quill pens might be about to make a comeback - but not in a stationers! Because researchers have developed a nano-scale ink pen that can be used to control the shapes of polymers that can be used to make superfast computers. Polymers are are giant chemical structures made by linking lots of smaller molecules together, and what Imperial College's Alex Perevedentsev and his colleagues have discovered is that, with a dab of nano-ink delivered in the right way from their nib-pen, they can make polymers adopt specific shapes that alter the way light passes through them. And as he explained to Kat,... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

A new breed of super metals, that are extremely water repellent have been created. Their potential applications range from rust and frost free aircraft to self-cleaning toilets. Danielle Blackwell spoke to Prof. Chunlei Guo from the University of Rochester to find out more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Sea turtles follow unique magnetic signatures to return to their home beaches to lay their eggs. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists