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.
Choose Your Treatment Wisely
A campaign to combat "over-treatment" of patients has been announced by doctors' leaders this week. Called "Choosing Wisely", the initiative promotes more open conversations between doctors and patients, rather than an obsessive - and frequently financially incentivised - adherence to targets and guidelines. Consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra authored the…
Baboon Buddies
Humans, like all other primates, are a sociable bunch and we tend to pick friends who are fairly similar to us in terms of education, religion, personality and so on. Now researchers studying a troop of wild Chacma baboons living in Namibia have discovered that these animals pick their buddies…
Selective Hearing
How our ears screen out sounds so that we can listen selectively only to those sounds we want to hear - like a friend's voice across a noisy room for instance - has been revealed by scientists in Australia. Gary Housley, from the University of New South Wales, has found…
A Study in Scarlet
Dressing in red around the office might have your colleagues seeing you in a different light! A new study from Durham University's Robert Barton has found that when the same person is shown wearing a red-coloured top, rather than a blue one, they tend to be rated as dominant, aggressive,…
15.05.15
Plants and animals are incredible constructions, built from the fundamental building blocks of cells. But how are we made? By modelling how algae cells literally turn themselves inside out, researchers are hoping to understand how our own bodies are formed. Heather Douglas spoke to Professor Raymond Goldstein, Schlumberger Professor of…
Facebook leads to biased views
Content curation and news filtering by Facebook, as well as other social media websites, likely leads to ideological biases in the information individuals see and read, a new study has shown.
Males donate competitively
If you are thinking of raising money for charity, what's the best way to ensure you hit your fundraising target? According to Nichola Raihani from UCL, you need to be an attractive woman so men will compete with each other to donate the most to your online giving page. Kat…
Modern lifestyles reduce gut bug diversity
You are not alone! Your body is home to a whole host of bacteria that live in and on you: your microbiome. You might be slightly repulsed by this idea, but these tiny organisms are really important for our health. There is now growing evidence that our microbes at risk…
GM Salmonella shrinks cancers
Salmonella bacteria can be modified to make a safe anti-cancer treatment, scientists have shown.
How do we hear time within sounds?
While you listen to a noise, nerve cells in your brain are busy processing sound information and helping you make sense it. One big mystery in the world of hearing research has been how we perceive repeated sounds that hit our ears slowly - like the tapping of a woodpecker…
Dark matter may not be completely 'dark'
Druham Universtiy's Richard Massey takes Chris Smith to a galaxy far, far away; or, more accurately, several galaxies over, which also happen to have just collided with each other, providing in the process new insights into one of the Universe's biggest enigmas, dark matter…
How the Moon was Made
How the Earth came by its Moon has always been something of a mystery: Scientists had theorised that a Mars-sized planet, called Theia, crashed into Earth and that the moon formed from the debris. But, analysis of the rock chemistry from the lunar surface reveals that the moon and Earth…
Evidence of dinosaur cannibalism
Evidence has been revealed that a type of dinosaur fell victim to occasional cannibalism. Daspletosaurus was a member of the tyrannosaurs group, and relative of the famous T. rex. A skull was found to have scratches matching the teeth of a predator around the same size, leading researchers to conclude…
Yeast: Rising from the bread
A favourite Easter tradition are hot cross buns, but there's one particular ingredient which no bread can do without: yeast. What is about this strange powdery ingredient that makes it so useful? Philip Garsed took some freshly baked hot cross buns to molecular biologiest Lia Chappell to find out.
Listening to the bat highway code
If you've ever seen huge flocks of birds or a shoal of fish, you might have wondered how they are all able to move together without ever colliding. Now scientists at the University of Bristol believe they have been able to explain how flocks of bats are able to avoid…
How light can transmit WiFi
Anyone who has struggled with a lousy WiFi connection in a busy public space knows only too well that there are limits to how much data can be beamed over the airwaves like this. Now scientists have come up with a new technology that uses the room lighting to transmit…
When humans made their mark on the world
Geologists like to divide up history into epochs, or eras, separated by events that leave an indelible mark in the geological record of the earth - for example, the meteorite strike that finished off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, whose impact is written in rocks across the globe. Similarly…
ELife episode 18: TB, and a Handshake
In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about TB, HIV, social behaviour in ants, genetics in baboons and a surprising twist to the handshake.
Adapting to Arsenic
In a remote area in the Andes mountain there exist perilously high levels of arsenic: one of the most toxic substances known to man. But people have been living there for thousands of years, and it has now been discovered that this population has adapted to this dangerous environment. The…
Sophie the Stegosaurus
Dr Kat Arney meets Sophie the Stegosaurus, and Natural History Museum researcher Charlotte Brassey.