Special Editions
Probing the weird, wacky and spectacular, the Naked Scientists Special Editions are special one-off scientific reports, investigations and interviews on cutting-edge topics by the Naked Scientists team.
Large planet orbiting a white dwarf
And now onto something out of this World. For the first time, scientists have found evidence of a giant, Neptune-size planet orbiting a white dwarf star. This was previously not thought to be possible due to the destructive energy low-mass stars, such as our Sun, emit to the surrounding solar…
The voice of Ash from Pokemon!
Join the Naked Gaming Podcast team for a special bonus episode, with an in-depth interview with the voice of Ash Ketchum from the pokemon TV series. What was it like getting the job, where did the voice come from, and which other characters did she play? Like this podcast? Please…
The Holly and the Ivy: why go evergreen?
Taking a leaf from the holly and the ivy's book, Katie Haylor explores the virtue of being evergreen...? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
Why are Christmas trees a thing?
How did the popular concept of Christmas trees get started? Extolling the virtues of a real tree, including a superior short-term carbon footprint and a nicer smell, Adam Murphy explains how the tree tradition began... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
AI to Detect Tuberculosis
The lung disease tuberculosis is still one of the world's top ten causes of death. And while it's completely treatable, patients need constant monitoring to make sure the treatment is working. The monitoring is fairly labour-intensive: it requires taking a sample of phlegm and counting the bacteria inside by eye…
How measles suppresses immunity for years
Measles was thought to have been eradicated from the UK in 2017, but following an outbreak the very next wear, we lost this elimination status. Measles is a highly infectious disease that can quickly spread through the unvaccinated population with a high complication rate involving pneumonia, gastroenteritis and even encephalitis…
Deprivation and male depression
Mental health awareness has been improving in the past few years, but there still isn't universal, accessible support for vulnerable people. A recent study carried out by members of the University of Cambridge might help develop targeted support: it showed that the environment in which people live is correlated to…
Avalanche survivor: Lawrence's story
In 2001 Lawrence Jones set out on a freeskiing trip with his mates. It was not the first adventure trip they had been on, but it was the last one that any of them took lightly again. An avalanche turned Lawrence's holiday from fun to tragedy within the space of…
Climate change: what does net zero look like?
The UN Climate Change Conference - COP 25 - has been taking place in Madrid. The purpose of the conference is to take the next crucial steps in implementing the global carbon-cutting proposals agreed 4 years ago in Paris. But where are we on the road towards a carbon-neutral future,…
Why planting trees isn't always a good idea
This is a response to a story we covered earlier this year about planting trees for climate change. A study in the journal Science claimed that the Earth has space for an extra billion hectares of trees; and if they were planted, it would lock away enough carbon dioxide to…
Lakes, carbon and microbes: a hidden world
While forests do a great job of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, as soon as the trees decompose, all that carbon goes straight back up again. And a new study has investigated how that decomposition works inside freshwater lakes. Scientists have found that what was traditionally just called…
Food micronutrient-protecting capsules
If you have access to a healthy, balanced diet, hopefully you'll be getting adequate supply of micronutrients. Going without can lead to serious health consequences. Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness in kids globally, and is a major public health issue in some parts of the…
Staphylococcus aureus biofilm vaccine
A vaccine that can protect against infection with the skin bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, which causes everything from wound and joint infections to impetigo and pneumonia, has been developed by scientists in the US. Apart from increasing rates of antibiotic resistance, what makes Staph infections hard to treat is that the…
Bird societies
You might think we are special as humans for forming societies with complex structures. But we are not actually so different from other species in this regard. It was believed that complex social structures were a trait of large mammals only - but a recent study has shown that birds…
Voyager 2: leaving the Solar System
In recent months the satellite Voyager 2, launched in 1977, became the second man-made object to escape from our Solar System and begin its journey into interstellar space. We know it's done that because it's crossed the heliopause, a bubble made by particles, called a plasma, that stream off the…
Oil wastewater makes earthquakes stronger
Oil production has multiple environmentally-devastating consequences - including creating of billions of gallons of salty, chemical-filled wastewater. Typically, companies dispose of this wastewater by pumping it deep underground. But a growing body of evidence shows that this pumping causes 'injection-induced earthquakes', most notably the Jones earthquake swarm: thousands of earthquakes…
Glass recognises numbers just by looking
We have smartphones, smart watches, even smart fridges. But now, from a paper published in the journal Photonics Research, we could be seeing smart glass. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a piece of glass that can mimic machine visual perception, basically how smart phones recognize your face to…
Brain changes in obese children
One in five UK children are obese. The biological and social factors behind this are complex, but the long term consequences range from cardiovascular and liver disease to diabetes. Now, according to a new study, it may even affect the development of a child's brain too, with overweight children showing…
Old books reveal how happy we once were
Considering people's wellbeing in making policy decisions is becoming more and more important, but it's only in recent years that governments have started to record the subjective satisfaction of the population. A team of researchers is looking to fill in the historical gap for national mood by analysing the text…
Gene boost makes cancer more visible
Immunotherapy is the term used to describe techniques that provoke the immune system to attack and remove cancer. The argument goes that because the immune system is extremely specific in what it targets, and because it has a memory and can learn and improve its action as it goes along,…