Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

In early August, the UK stepped back from some of the proposed lockdown easing measures. So how are public health officials managing these situations, are we in good shape to cope with the approaching winter, and is this the pattern of coronavirus cases we should expect going forward? Chris Smith hears from Maggie Rae, president of the faculty of Public Health.... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The millions of rods and cones in the retina at the back of each of your eyes, which turn light into nerve signals to send to the brain, use a lot of energy. So the retina tends to burn out faster than the rest of the body. But now scientists have found that short bursts of a red light shone into your eyes could help reduce or even reverse this ageing process. Katie Haylor spoke to Glenn Jeffery, who's been looking at a group of 24 people with no eye disease for the study... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The liver is an incredible organ that does a number of different jobs - including cleaning our blood and breaking down chemicals and drugs - to keep us healthy. And liver problems can have serious consequences, resulting in potentially needing a new one in the case of liver failure. And there aren't exactly loads of spare healthy livers around, and some people just aren't suited for transplant. But this week, scientists have published news of an artificial liver system that cleans the blood, and returns it again to the body within a matter of hours, whilst also encouraging the liver tissue to... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Colourful still life paintings of bowls of fruit have been a favourite of artists for generations, and there are thousands of examples in art galleries across the world. Now, two friends from Belgium - one an art historian, and the other a plant biologist - are asking for your help to find paintings that reveal clues about how some of our modern foods came into being. This unusual project came about when the two of them were on holiday in St Petersburg, and visited a museum - as Ive de Smet told Katie Haylor... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

After 22 years of searching, researchers at the Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands have successfully identified the genetic cause behind a certain type of inherited adult hearing loss - a defect in the so-called RIPOR2 gene. Eva Higginbotham spoke to geneticist Hannie Kremer and ear nose and throat surgeon Ronald Pennings about how they did it. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Kim Hill catches up with virologist Chris Smith to review the Covid-19 current state of play, from Leicester's lockdown, the WHO stance on masks and aerosol spread, to long-term immunity and long-haul symptoms of Covid-19, the link between ethnicity and more severe Covid-19 disease, and whether the world's over-reacted to the coronavirus threat... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How has the pandemic affected the global food supply? That's the subject of a recent report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. Their message is that while there have been a few industry issues so far - overripe fruit left unpicked, spoiled batches of milk left undelivered - that's only a taste of what's to come if there's a huge global recession around the corner. Chris Smith and spoke to Maximo Torero - the organisation's chief economist - as well as University of Cambridge land economist Shailaja Fennell... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

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

Do you consider yourself something of a Dr Doolittle? According to new research from the University of Amsterdam, we're all actually pretty good at understanding what animals are trying to express - at least, animals that we are closely related to like chimpanzees. Eva Higginbotham spoke to Roza Kamiloglu, the lead author on the study, about her research... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month on the eLife Podcast we look at how sugar takes away the pleasure of consuming and makes you eat more, we find out what loneliness does to the brain, uncover new insights into how HIV infects females, and explore sex bias in biomedical research... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Astronomers have taken what might be the first ever picture of a baby planet being formed. It looks like a beautiful tornado-shaped spiral of light, and there's a tiny twist visible inside one of the arms of the spiral. Why is this an achievement? And how can you actually tell whether there's a planet inside that tiny point of light? Phil Sansom asked Anthony Boccaletti, who led the team from the European Southern Observatory in taking this picture - as well as University of Cambridge astronomer Carolin Crawford... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

You might think that when you're choosing a partner to have children with that your decision is entirely yours. However it turns out that biology has an interesting trick up its sleeve, which may surprise you. It turns out that there are guidance mechanisms that, like homing beacons, can help swimming sperm get to the eggs. It's because cells in women's bodies release special attracting chemicals into the fluid surrounding the eggs, and, according to a recent paper, these chemicals seem to prefer some sperm over others, taking the decision making completely out of your hands! In reproductive... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Everyday in the UK over 40 people die from liver disease, some of whom could be saved by having a liver transplant - but there aren't enough donor livers to go around. But what if we could grow livers in a laboratory, and use those instead? A team in Pittsburgh has now done just that in rats. The livers were transplanted into animals genetically modified to prevent them from rejecting the transplant. Eva Higginbotham heard from Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez how they did it... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Where are we now, six months into the COVID-19 pandemic? The official global death toll is over 380,000 with well over 6 million confirmed cases according to the World Health Organisation. Are we deceiving ourselves that we really understand it? Jonathan Ball is a virologist at the University of Nottingham who's met some exotic viruses in his time - so for an update, Chris Smith asked his thoughts on the coronavirus and its weird symptoms... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

A few weeks ago some stork babies made the news as the first white stork chicks to hatch in the UK for over 600 years. Despite the very long gap, here in the UK a legacy of these large, white, migratory birds has persisted. I'm Eva Higginbotham, and I spoke to Dr Alexander Lees, senior lecturer in Conservation Biology at Manchester Metropolitan University, about the new arrivals, monogamous dating for storks, and the history of white storks in Europe. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Phase 2 of the hydroxychloroquine debacle, how the race to publish is leading to rapid retractions, whether Sweden's having second thoughts, did Covid come out of a lab, innate immunity and antibody responses, and how many tests prove I'm negative? Virologist Dr Chris Smith talks to Radio new Zealand National's Kim Hill... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Donald Trump got a lot of stick when he talked about using disinfectant and light to kill off COVID-19 - seemingly implying people should drink bleach or shine a torch down their throats. Now a team at Columbia University has indeed discovered a narrow wavelength within UV light that they call 'far-UVC', that as well as killing viruses on surfaces, is also safe for humans because it can't get through our skin. Eva Higginbotham heard more from David Brenner... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

In this week's coronavirus update, the impact of blood groups on Covid risk, progress towards a vaccine, and the UK still has 8000 cases a day: what does this mean for herd immunity? Also, is Sweden's approach the wrong one, has hydroxychloroquine died a death, what actually is the Covid syndrome, what role may genes play, and how do we calculate Covid excess mortality? Dr Chris Smith talks to Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

A herd of fluffy wild Kashmiri goats made the news back in March at the onset of the lockdown when they descended on the Welsh town of Llandudno to explore where all the people had got to. Now, after an investigation by a scientist in London, it turns out that goats are not only curious creatures, but, as the first domesticated livestock species some eleven thousand years ago, they are also able to understand human gestures like pointing. Eva Higginbotham spoke to Alan McElligott from the University of Roehampton about his research... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The UK government has come under fire for failing to protect care homes from the spread of the coronavirus. The facilities have seen more than 14,000 coronavirus-related deaths so far - that's over a quarter of the UK's total mortality, in just a tiny fraction of the population. And these figures echo a similar situation across European countries. Chris Smith spoke to Julienne Meyer - a nurse, an emeritus professor at City University of London, and an adviser to the National Care Forum... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists