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.
MS vaccine using your own brain cells
Could an injection of your own brain cells be a way to halt multiple sclerosis - MS? That's what researchers in the US are finding in mice with the disease. In MS, the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord, damaging a material called myelin. An extract of this…
Pfizer announce Covid-19 vaccine
What dowe know about Pfizer and bioNTech's new RNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, preliminary results for which were announced this week? Who was tested in the trial? And what is a genetic vaccine, why were vaccinees innoculated twice, what does 90% effective mean, and what's the reason it needs to be stored…
COVID: The Swedish Strategy
There's been a lot of discussion about the Swedish approach to the coronavirus pandemic, and back in September, Jonas F Ludvigsson, a paediatrician and clinical epidemiologist at the Karolinka Institute, published a paper describing in detail what happened in Sweden during the first 8 months of the pandemic, so between…
HFpEF: heart failure type is underserved
Have you ever heard of the condition known as "heart failure with preserved ejection fraction"? If not, then you're not alone; despite it representing hundreds of thousands of heart failure cases every year in the UK alone, a new study shows that many doctors don't really understand it, and many…
UK Back in Lockdown
Virologist Dr Chris Smith joins Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill to talk Covid-19. Why is the UK back in a lockdown, and did the measure come too late? How are we testing for the virus and how many cases are we missing? What is the incubation period, and what's…
Covid control and the economy
There's been lots of talk over the last several months over how best to both protect people from coronavirus and protect the economy, and economist Quentin Grafton from Australian National University has been crunching the numbers. Back in September, he combined epidemiological models of how the virus spreads with models…
Ten equations that rule the world
Would you like to make more money? Understand your relationships better? Know when to trust someone, or something, or not? Well, David Sumpter's got an equation for you in his new book 'Ten equations that rule the world" as he explained to Eva Higginbotham... Like this podcast? Please help us…
Daylight Saving Time: a history
Were you waking up too early this week? Across Europe, we recently left summer Daylight Light Saving time and re-entered standard time. But where does this practice of changing the clocks come from, and is it still a good idea? Eva Higginbotham reports... Like this podcast? Please help us by…
Plastic recycling: the one pot method
Plastics are useful but notoriously hard to recycle back into their component chemicals, which limits what else we can do with them. Now, scientists in the US have developed a new catalyst that can break apart common plastics and turn them into chemicals that can be used to make other…
Glitter litter: the dark side of dazzle
We've heard news that Morrisons, Waitrose and John Lewis' own brand Christmas products will not contain glitter this year. And now, scientists at Anglia Ruskin University have looked at making little ponds in the lab with river water and sediment. Katie Haylor heard from lead author Danielle Green, who explained…
How not to get fooled by graphs
If you've been paying attention to the news in recent times, you'll be very familiar by now with graphs: COVID rates, infection rates, data are being displayed in a plethora of ways. But there are, as the old saying Mark Twain made popular goes "lies; damn lies and statistics", so…
Stop littering in space!
Britain recently began a diplomatic campaign to draw up new rules for responsible behaviour in space; essentially it's a "don't litter" policy intended to reduce the threat posed by decades of irresponsible dumping in orbit. But what's the scale of the problem of space littering, and how might things go…
Protected land: UK facing biodiversity crisis
On the 28th September, Boris Johnson committed to increasing the area of protected land in the UK to 30% by 2030. This announcement was made at a virtual UN event, where the prime minister, alongside upwards of 60 other world leaders, signed up to a pledge to tackle the world's…
Bee microbiome smells tell nestmates apart
How do bees recognise who's a bona fide member of the nest and who is an impostor? It turns out that it's down to the bacteria they carry inside them... Eva Higginbotham heard how Cassondra Vernier at Washington University in St Louis has figured it out with her colleague Yehuda…
Alien life: a zoologist's guide
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Jim Gazzard: adapting teaching to Covid-19
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…
Naked Gaming's Chris & Leigh interviewed!
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…
UK Covid-19 second wave
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…
Cambridge and Covid: a new academic year
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…
The many ends of the universe
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…