Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

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

Covid-19 is forcing educators to re-think centuries of teaching traditions and develop new ways to provide a rich but safe student experience. Jim Gazzard leads Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education (ICE). He joined palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger and Theo Bloom to speak with Chris Smith about how adult education and training are evolving rapidly... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Listen in to a special interview all about the Naked Gaming Podcast.Gene "Bean" Baxter from Podcast Radio (and Radio Hall of Famer!) chats to Leigh Milner and Chris Berrow about what its like being married to each other, and recording our gaming podcast.Topics include: how coronavirus has affected the gaming industry, what the best simulator of all time is, and whether Google Stadia is really worth buying. And Bean had to start off asking if Chris and Leigh were naked. Luckily they are used to fielding that question. And if you're wondering the answer was... no. They were wearing dressing... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As UK cases spike again, Dr Chris Smith joins RNZ's Kim Hill to discuss why some geographies are particularly hard-hit, what constitutes a "super-spreader" and who are the asymptomatic cases, what sentinel screening is telling us about the features and spread of Covid-19. Also on the table, low-cost rapid testing technology, the prospect of using testing to return the airline industry to viability, the timelines for vaccines, and why the Neanderthal in you might affect your coronavirus risk... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month on the eLife podcast, artificial intelligence reveals a better test for prostate cancer, is the brain stuffed with neuronal stem cells, bonobos with cultural preferences, and why some insects play "follow my leader"... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

On October 8th, about 15,000 students will return for the new academic year at Cambridge University. Other UK institutions have seen outbreaks and quarantine measures en-masse as Covid has ripped though university campuses. Cambridge Vice Chancellor Stephen Toope spoke with Chris Smith to discuss whether the student experience can be preserved at Cambridge in the face of measures required to control coronavirus... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Welcome to the end of the universe. Which one will we get? Will the life drain slowly from thousands of cold, dead galaxies; or will the stars get ripped apart by a wave of strange new matter? That's the subject of a new book by astrophysicist Katie Mack, "The End of Everything". And be warned, some of the catastrophes she described to Phil Sansom make the coronavirus look like a walk in the park... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Everyone loves magic. But does that extend to animals? You might have seen videos online of people performing tricks to animals, and the animals being hugely entertained by it, but do they understand what's going on. That's the idea put forth by researchers from the University of Cambridge. Adam Murphy spoke to Elias Garcia-Pelegrin about what magic tricks might be teach us about the animals around us... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 is a debilitating genetic disease that causes muscle weakness and wasting, amongst other problems, and there's currently no cure. It causes a toxic form of the chemical RNA - a genetic messenger molecule similar to DNA - to build up and clog up other important processes inside cells. Now, scientists at the University of California San Diego have used gene editing to reverse the disease in mice, as Eva Higginbotham heard from Gene Yeo... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

People everywhere are clinging to the hope that there'll soon be a coronavirus vaccine. That aspiration suffered a setback last week when AstraZeneca announced the suspension of its trial of the Covid-19 vaccine it's developing. So how are decisions to start and stop clinical trials made, and what's the present trajectory for a coronavirus vaccine? Chris Smith asked Gordon Dougan, who's overseen the development of many vaccines during his career, to explain... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Virologist Dr Chris Smith joins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill for a Covid-19 update covering why AstraZeneca and Oxford University's coronavirus vaccine trial was halted and how vaccine side effects are investigated, why Boris Johnson has launched his Covid moonshot, signs that vapers are at higher risk of Covid-19, long term immunity to coronavirus infection or vaccination, and the bradykinin storm hypothesis to explain severe Covid-19 infection... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

From the Babylonians to psychologist Sigmund Freud, as humans we've been fascinated by what our dreams might mean for thousands of years. Now, computer scientists have turned their hands to the art of dream divination with the development of automatic dream analysis software, as lead researcher Luca Aiello from the Nokia Bell Labs told Eva Higginbotham... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

There have been some record breaking temperatures lately, and Adam Murphy is hot on the trail of why one place in particular stands out... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Drink driving is one of the biggest killers on our roads. Brian Suffoletto is an A&E doctor in the US where he's spent the past 15 years developing digital interventions to stop people drinking and driving. Lately he's been working on a system that uses a smartphone to analyse the way a person walks to pick up on subtle giveaways that they're over the limit. Katie Haylor heard how it works... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

PTSD is a disease that may occur after experiencing trauma, often characterised by the involuntary reliving of particularly painful memories. About 1 in 3 people who experience trauma will develop PTSD, but it's unclear why some people develop it and others don't. New research out of the University of Basel has shown that a genetic component may help explain why some people are more susceptible, as researcher Dominique de Quervain told Eva Higginbotham... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Dr Chris Smith joins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill to talk about the latest news and breakthroughs around the Covid-19 coronavirus. How the virus spreads, the prospect of long-term immunity following natural infection or vaccination, how herd immunity works, what drugs do and do not look promising for Covid-19 patients, and how to stay safe on the bus... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Getting cold won't just make your hair stand up, it may also make it grow. Yulia Shwartz at Harvard University and her colleagues have found that the nerves that give us goose pimples also send a message to the cells in the follicles that produce hairs, making them grow. It explains the prolific winter coat that some animals grow in the cold. Cambridge dermatologist Jane Sterling took Chris Smith through the findings... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Giant pandas, which for decades were endangered, finally shed the status in 2016 thanks to huge conservation efforts. But scientists have been warning that their reserves aren't well designed for the ecosystem as a whole - and now a group of zoologists have found that even though panda numbers have gone up since the 60s, big carnivores like leopards have almost disappeared. Bill McShea from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute is one of the authors of the study, and he told Phil Sansom what's been going on inside the panda parks... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

New research means we're going to have to think again about how human sperm swim. You might have seen movies of them looking a bit like tadpoles in a pond - the head carries the male's DNA and the long tail, or flagellum, propels the sperm forward. That motion was first described over 300 years ago, but now a joint team from Britain and Mexico think we might need to re-write the textbooks, as Eva Higginbotham heard from Hermes Gadelha... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The world took a step towards our goal of harnessing nuclear fusion as an energy source last week when the construction officially began of ITER, the new International Thermonuclear Experimental fusion Reactor. Michel Claessens is the author of the book ITER: The Giant Fusion Reactor. He spoke to Adam Murphy about the project... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists