Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

A new way to repair diseased livers has been unveiled by researchers at the University of Cambridge. They've found a way to grow the cells that line the branching system of pathways inside the liver - the bile ducts. It's a big step forward. Chris Smith heard from Kourosh Saeb-Parsy, who is part of the team behind the work... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

One thing we're all hoping for is that the new coronavirus vaccines will give us 'herd immunity' - this would mean that so many people are immune to the virus that it would start to die away as it can't find new hosts to infect. But how does herd immunity work in practice, and are the vaccines we have likely to put us in this fortunate position? Eva Higginbotham spoke with Peter English, a consultant in communicable disease control, to find out... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Virologist Dr Chris Smith catches up with RNZ's Kim Hill with an update on the Covid-19 latest news including encouraging data on the performance of the vaccines, but discouraging news on the stances of some prominent European leaders towards AstraZeneca's vaccine. Also, new Covid variants in America, and why scientists suspect flu might be waiting in the wings to make a dramatic comeback... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Osteoarthritis is a painful condition caused by wear and tear to the slippery cartilage that normally coats and lubricates the bone surfaces in our joints. This doesn't repair itself very well, so, when it wears out, joint replacement is usually the only option. But recently, scientists out of Penn State University in the US have shown that the antidepressant drug paroxetine has an interesting side-effect: it encourages the cells that make and build cartilage to grow. So, perhaps, in the future we'll be able to pop a pill, rather than have a hip replacement. Fadia Kamal told Katie Haylor what... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

About 70% of our planet is covered in water, and the vast majority of that water is in the salty oceans. But in a paper published recently, scientists from Germany propose that the Arctic Ocean was - at a relatively recent few points in Earth's history - actually entirely freshwater. Rivers and meltwater flushed out the salt, and lower sea levels worldwide at the time meant it couldn't come back, at least for a while. Getting to grips with how and exactly when this was happening is critical to our understanding of how climate change affects the Arctic, as Katie Haylor heard from Walter... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Many of us may love driving, but nature certainly doesn't love us doing it! Alongside the pollution, there's the noise of traffic, which isn't just a nuisance for humans. Lots of research shows man-made noise affects nearby animals, and now another study shows that insects are also being impacted: female crickets get so confused by road noise that they struggle to pick the best potential suitor from the pack. Zoologist Adam Bent explained the situation to Phil Sansom... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

In the online world, a battle is brewing between tech giants Google and Facebook and the Australian government. The government are proposing a law to force organisations like Google pay the news outlets that produce the news content they currently run for free on their websites, where it draws huge amounts of traffic. The tech companies have retaliated by threatening to withdraw their services from Australia. To explore this in more detail, Adam Murphy spoke with entrepreneur and tech Investor Peter Cowley... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The things we see inhabiting our planet have evolved fantastic adaptations and habits to overcome issues in their environment that get in the way of an ultimate happy ending. This week an international collaboration led by scientists from Japan, have established the first life cycle in a creature other than the famous cicadas where they erupt from the earth all at the same time to cause havoc and interrupt human lives. Martin Khechara spoke to arthropod researcher Eleanor Drinkwater from the University of York about the research... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Erosion is carrying away millions of tonnes of the soil we depend upon to keep our crops alive, every year. To try to prevent soil losses, farmers have moved away from some traditional techniques, like deep ploughing, and they're also planting short-lived "cover-crops" that protect the soil surface over winter. They then sow seed directly through these cover crops for the next season. The problem is that, without periodic deep ploughing, soils can become highly compacted. Plants don't tend to send their roots through compact soils so well, meaning they miss out on nutrients, and this can dent... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Anyone who's had surgery knows that recovery is often accompanied by discomfort. But scientists in Germany, writing in the British Medical Journal recently, explain how playing music and soothing words to patients while they are "under" during surgery results in less self reported pain and lower use of painkillers - specifically opioids - afterwards. Katie Haylor spoke to Ernil Hansen from Regensburg University Hospital in Bavaria... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Amid accusations of "despicable behaviour", the EU are backpedalling furiously. With fewer than 2% of EU citizens vaccinated compared with 12% of the UK population, Brussels faces a rising tide of disquiet from EU members as the bloc fails to get a vaccine programme on track. They blamed AstraZeneca, then invoked laws to erect a border across Ireland to block movements of vaccines made in Belgium. Many cannot believe the behaviour of the Brussels bureaucrats. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

You've probably heard of catnip, which makes cats go crazy. There's also another plant called silver vine, which has a similar effect. Now scientists have been nailing down what in silver vine makes cats so excited, but also a surprising bonus effect of the chemical - it makes an effective mosquito repellent! Eva Higginbotham heard how from lead author on the study Masau Miyazaki from Iwate University, which has just been published in the journal Science Advances...Ref: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/4/eabd9135 Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Although knitting and other handicrafts are having a bit of a moment during the pandemic as we all try to keep ourselves busy at home, the art and practice of knitting goes back a long way through history. Eva Higginbotham spoke with Loretta Napoleoni, a journalist and author who last year wrote a book about the power, and history, of knitting... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Now in the UK it is dark and dreary, but there's been a recent colourful scientific discovery to brighten up the day, as a new flamboyantly-dressed dinosaur has recently been described by scientists at the University of Portsmouth and the State Museum of Natural History in Germany. Eva Higginbotham heard the story from lead scientist on the project, Dave Martill... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Kim Hill talks to virologist Chris Smith about Covid-19 in 2020, in retrospect and right now. What's the situation with global access to vaccines for the new coronavirus, and will the "new variant" emerging in the UK defeat the present vaccine repertoire? Where did this variant come from, what does it tell us about how viruses evolve, and is the UK looking at another lockdown post Christmas? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Do you have any winter holiday traditions? This month, as we were gearing up for our holidays here at the Naked Scientists, we thought it would be a fun experiment to explore the science behind holiday celebrations around the world with the help of Chunendra Sahu, Cristina Rodriguez, Ljiljana Fruk, and Olgo Loblova - all researchers at the University of Cambridge... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The WHO estimates that up to 650,000 people globally die each year from the flu, and one of the tools in our arsenal against it is the seasonal flu vaccine. Recently there's been a huge breakthrough in the search for a universal flu vaccine, that is one vaccine that would give broad protection from lots of different strains of flu. Just published in the journal Nature Medicine, Eva Higginbotham spoke to one of the scientists behind the work: Lynda Coughlan... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Traditionally, when someone says "vaccine", the image of a syringe and needle usually springs to mind. But injections need trained staff to administer them, and they're unpleasant, even for people who are not scared of needles. So vaccines you can inhale sound altogether more attractive. And that's what researchers at Rutgers University in the US have been working on. They've found a particular clutch of chemical compounds that are very good at passing harmlessly through the lungs and entering the bloodstream where they can interact with the immune system. What's exciting is that these... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

When we nod off we often dream, but many people have reported that, over the course of the pandemic, what they dream about has changed dramatically. It seems to be a real claim, and scientists are studying it. Eva Higginbotham spoke with dream scientist Alejandro Ezquerro-Nassar from the University of Cambridge... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The AstraZeneca Oxford University Covid-19 vaccine results were announced recently, but something wasn't quite right: it turned out that some people in the trial had received the wrong vaccine dose, although with surprising results. Chris Smith joins RNZ's Kim Hill to review the AZ and other vaccines... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists