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.
More than 50% of the world's population now lives in urban areas and, in recent years, many major cities have been hit with extreme weather events due to the effects of climate change, like the flooding that hit the London underground - and Queen guitarist Brian May's basement - in…
Cities have been found to be warming at faster rates than the rest of the planet due to the materials used such as concrete absorbing heat more readily than organic materials. This is known as the "urban heat island" effect. One antidote, scientists have found, is to plant trees. But…
As we near Christmas, we will be subjected to a fair few more hugs than usual! Some of them can be great, and others... just downright awkward. But what makes a bad hug? What makes a good hug? New research has been published investigating the most pleasant hugging style. Katie…
We know that sleep is critical for our physical and mental wellbeing, but as it turns out, the answer doesn't simply lie in the number of hours we spend unconscious each night. New research from digital healthcare company, Huma, suggests that a goldilocks bedtime between 10-11PM is linked with a…
Virologist Chris Smith talks with Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill on Saturday 27th November as the world contemplates the discovery of the Covid-19 variant that the WHO has dubbed "Omicron" and labelled as a "variant of concern". How will scientists investigate this agent, and how are policymakers responding? Will…
Earth's largest animals, whales, need a lot of food... that goes without saying. But, new research from a team at Stanford University have found that whales need 10-20 tonnes of food on a feeding day, which is up to three times more than initially thought. Of course that means three…
Now this might have flown under your radar, but last Wednesday NASA launched the DART mission, a spacecraft on a one-way collision course with an asteroid, in the world's first full-scale planetary defence test. Tricia Smith asked Space Author Colin Stuart, if life as we know it is in danger…
Covid cases in many European countries are suddenly substantially up. But in a dramatic role reversal, the UK has gone from the standout Covid-19 bad boy of Europe to one of the better performers in terms of daily cases and hospitalisations. According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical…
This week, Matt contacted us asking "With three space missions currently converging on Mars how do the nations avoid orbital collisions? Do they share data, do they have transponders or space traffic control etc?". Katie King spoke with Chris Bridges, academic at Surrey Space Centre in the University of Surrey…
Covid is surging across Europe, but what's causing it, and will the UK follow suit, or are Europe hot on our heels? Should vaccines be mandatory, and would vaccine passports work? Why does Covid-19 vaccine protection wane with time, and are we looking at a relentless cycle of boosters indefinitely,…
When two atoms join together, the laws of physics tell us that a large amount of energy will be released, but the experiments performed so far by scientists to achieve nuclear fusion have always yielded a lot less energy than the inputs. This week, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in…
The first part of understanding a new language is working out where one word stops and the next word starts out of a string of syllables. Researchers at ELTE University in Hungary have been looking at how dogs' brains respond to language to figure out if they can recognise words,…
Recently Facebook announced a name change for the company to Meta, which comes during the midst of a marketing plug by Mark Zuckerberg for his new take on an augmented reality universe. Facebook's metaverse. Harry Lewis finds out what the metaverse is from BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman, but first…
We talk a lot about proteins on this programme - what they do, how they work - but have you ever wondered what they sound like? A group of scientists at the National University of Singapore have been turning proteins into pieces of music, as Sally Le Page heard from…
Antibiotics are such an important part of modern medicine but their effectiveness has been waning in the last few decades as certain bacteria, so called superbugs, have become resistant to multiple common antibiotics, leading to the UN declaring that antimicrobial resistance is one of the top 10 global public health…
Have you ever noticed that you take one particular walking route to the shops, only to take a completely different route on the way back? If so, you might not be alone...based on recent paper published in Nature Computational Science, this is more common than you might think and could…
The Earthshot Prize is an ambitious environmental program created by His Royal Highness Prince William to find and develop solutions for the climate emergency. This year's prizes were awarded last month at a ceremony in London. The prize for the Fix Our Climate category went to company Enapter, which developed…
"Test! Test! Test!" was the instruction from the World Health Organisation when the Covid-19 pandemic began to take hold around the world. Now scientists at MIT think they might have a solution, both for this pandemic and future ones: they've developed a sensor system comprising a fibre optic to which…
New research published this week has turned what we know about Alzheimer's disease progression on its head. Instead of the disease gradually spreading through the brain causing symptoms to get worse, the study found progression relied more on how quickly the number of disease-associated proteins increased in individual brain regions…
Wild water swimming is becoming ever more popular and, according to a new study published recently in Cell Reports Medicine, combining dips in cold water with time in a hot sauna could have potential health benefits. Verner Viisainen spoke with senior author Camilla Scheele to find out more... Like this…
21 Oct 2021
6 min
48 – 68
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