Special Editions

Can you remember when your voice broke? According to conventional wisdom most men can't, but women have very strong memories of their first period. This means that studies of puberty timing have struggled to investigate effects in men. However, new work from the University of Cambridge has shown that men…

12 Nov 2015 5 min

Music can have a huge impact on your emotions. Research published this week in PNAS has shown that if you apply the same sound properties that convey emotion in music and voices to environmental sounds such as a car engine they will also make people feel emotional. Daniel Bowling, a…

12 Nov 2015 4 min

Back in August we did a show all about the super material graphene. At the molecular level, a sheet of graphene looks a bit like chicken wire and is only a single atomic layer thick, if you were to pile up lots of these single layers you'd get graphite, just…

10 Nov 2015 6 min

Cambridge has a rich history of making discoveries about DNA - the genetic code inside each and every one of us. In the 50s Watson and Crick announced that they had unravelled the structure of DNA - the famous double helix shape. Now, 60 years later, another Cambridge scientist -…

10 Nov 2015 3 min

At the beginning of November, Kat went up to Liverpool for the annual NCRI Cancer Conference, bringing together scientists, doctors, nurses, patients and more from the UK and around the world to talk about the latest progress, ideas and issues in cancer research. On the first night, the charity Breast…

9 Nov 2015 5 min

E-cigarettes seem to be everywhere nowadays. Invented by a Chinese pharmacist and patented in 2004, they first went on sale in 2010 and are now the most popular way to quit smoking in the UK. But although there's no smoke, there's certainly a fire of controversy around e-cigs, as Kat…

8 Nov 2015 4 min

Respiratory syncytial virus or RSV is a virus of the respiratory system that infects people of all ages during the winter causing colds, however in infants and young children it can lead to much more severe illnesses like pneumonia. Despite it's huge global impact we still don't have a vaccine…

8 Nov 2015 5 min

Cataracts are caused when proteins inside the lens of the eye come together. It's a condition that clouds the vision of approximately one hundred and eighty million people worldwide, with surgery to replace the lens with a plastic one currently the only solution. Twenty million sufferers around the world are…

6 Nov 2015 4 min

Despite the hundreds of thousands of babies born every day, we still know relatively little about childbirth and how hormones play their key roles in it. A stress hormone, known as cortisol, is involved in inducing labour in animals, but doesn't seem to work the same way in people. A…

29 Oct 2015 5 min

As Winter approaches in some parts of the world, so does the colder weather and the threat of ice on the roads and on your car windscreen. But help is at hand from Kansas State University's Alexander van Dyke. As he explains to Charis Lestrange, he's created what's known as…

27 Oct 2015 3 min

Steel is used to manufacture a wide range of products from tiny surgical tools to huge ships. However, it can become corroded or contaminated when liquid comes into contact with it. A new method to coat steel with the compound tungsten oxide has been reported by researchers from Harvard University…

23 Oct 2015 3 min

There have been many exaggerated reports this week that birth order, whether you are a first or last born, affects how intelligent you will be compared to your siblings. However, the researchers at the University of Leipzig found that this difference in intelligence is very small and the more important…

23 Oct 2015 4 min

This week the UK science minister, Jo Johnson, was in Cambridge where he announced an initiative to pump 21 million into seven key research programmes intended to tackle some of the leading scientific and engineering challenges facing the world. The funding will come from the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences…

20 Oct 2015 4 min

Every day millions of people are moving around the world by air, land and sea, but they may be bringing with them more than just their luggage. For example, during last year's ebola outbreak, there were concerns that air travel would spread the disease from west Africa to other countries,…

8 Oct 2015 4 min

The Human Connectome Project has collected data of hundreds of individuals ranging from brain imaging to genetic and lifestyle information. Now researchers from the University of Oxford have used this information to see how much our lifestyle choices and personality traits are reflected in our brains. Karla Miller explained their…

8 Oct 2015 4 min

You know when after a run you feel great? Well previously scientists thought this runners' high was down to endorphins, but this may not be the case. Johannes Fuss from the University of Heidelberg found that mice that ran around all day felt less pain and less anxiety - key…

8 Oct 2015 3 min

Fossils have long been used to help us piece together the size and shape of extinct animals, but the colours of these animals has, until now, been something of a mystery. Now researchers from the University of Bristol have detected the chemical signatures of the original melanin pigments in ancient…

7 Oct 2015 3 min

This week, with the Rugby World Cup in full swing, the sports chief medical officer, Martin Raftery has called for changes to be made to the rules in order to cut the number of concussions suffered by players. Concussion occurs when the brain is shaken around inside the skull. This…

29 Sep 2015 5 min

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Sitting for long periods of time has long been associated with negative health effects and is thought to slow down your metabolism. However new research suggests that the movements linked with fidgeting could offset these negative effects. Charis Lestrange spoke with Professor Janet Cade about how fidgeting could potentially prolong…

28 Sep 2015 3 min

Solar power is growing in popularity around the world, with huge solar farms springing up all over the place. Obviously, solar panels need as much sunlight as possible, but this also means that they heat up, limiting their efficiency at converting sunlight into electricity. This conundrum may now be solved,…

28 Sep 2015 4 min