Naked Scientists Special Editions, iTunesU

Mobile phone companies could be set to erect bigger and taller phone masts as part of government plans to roll out 5G networks and improve coverage in rural areas. How might taller masts help with connectivity - and what is 5G anyway? Tech-xpert and Angel Investor Peter Cowley explains to Chris Smith and Katie Haylor...

Bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to many of the agents we use to deal with them, including antiseptics. The bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii is one example and causes hard to treat skin, chest, and urine infections in hospitals. Now, a team at the University of Newcastle, Australia have discovered a gene that renders Acinetobacter resistant to the chemical chlorhexidine that's used in hand disinfectants. But the gene evolved long before the antiseptic was invented, so what was it doing previously? As well as finding out, Adam Murphy also heard from lead author Karl Hassan how the discovery could help us to make more environmentally-friendly forms of plastic.

A research team from Virginia Tech, led by Ryan Pollyea, has found that earthquakes 8 kilometres below the earth's surface are increasing in intensity. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the team's work has found that a super-dense liquid called oilfield wastewater is seeping deep into the sheets of the earth, causing massive pressure changes that could be increasing earthquake intensity. Matthew Hall got into contact with Ryan Pollyea and Martin Chapman from Virginia Tech to see what all the rumble is about...

A heatwave has been sweeping across Europe recently, causing record temperatures across the continent and creating a lot of consternation in the Naked Scientist office. But where do heatwaves come from. And what's going to happen in the future. Adam Murphy spoke to Manoj Joshi, professor of climate dynamics from the University of East Anglia, starting with what a heatwave even is...

Your genome contains all of your genetic information, and it's pretty long - the Human Genome Project estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. But according to synthetic biology, you can survive on only 473! At least a very simple bacterium can. Of this "minimal genome", scientists previously didn't know what nearly a third actually did. But now Mark Wass has been telling Heather Jameson how his team at the University of Kent may have cracked 66 of the mystery genes...

The world's largest patch of seaweed appears every summer in the mid-Atlantic. Since 2011, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt has been growing to monstrous sizes - thousands of kilometres long - and it's been clogging up beaches along the Americas with metres of stinking brown sludge. Now, scientists in Florida and George have used satellite tracking to figure out what's going on - as Phil Sansom explains...

The nervous system is a complicated network of specialized cells, called neurons, that allow the transfer of information from one part of our body to another. To help our understanding of the nervous system in humans, scientists have been mapping the connections between neurons in a type of round worm, called C Elegans. C Elegans are so small that they are barely visible by the naked eye. So to obtain images of the worm, a special microscope, called an electron microscope is used. They take images along the worm, using an electron microscope and each image is analysed, and the neurons are marked. These marks are then put together to form a map of the neurons through the body of the worm. A map, known as a connectome. Connectomes give us more information on how signals transfer through our bodies, and which neurons are used for which actions. For example, how does the signal that tells my brain that it is hungry compare to a signal of pain from stubbing my toe? Due to the complicated nature of the nervous system, a lot of previous studies have focused on one area of the worm. For example, the brain. For the first time, a connectivity map has been drawn for the entire nervous system of a C- elegans, a type of round worm. I asked Professor Scott Emmons to describe what the work tells us.

You might remember from a year or so ago stories of an alien fly-by. The unidentified object was famously referred to as Oumuamua, which means "scout" in Hawaiian. Now a paper just out in the journal Nature Astronomy has revisited the story to probe whether Oumuamua really is alien technology, or just a cigar-shaped hunk of rock hurtling through the solar system. Matthew Hall got in touch with co-author Dr. Alan Fitzsimmons from Queens University Belfast...

In June, Izzie Clarke explored the extremely fast science of speed and headed to the race tracks with McLaren in their 600LT Spider supercar. But whilst Formula 1 and petrol racing have a huge fan base, we're also seeing the rise of electric racing, Formula E. In this bonus interview, Izzie spoke with Rodi Basso, Motorsport Director of Mclaren Applied Technologies, about the future of the sport.

With a rising global population, and the impending impacts of climate change, we need more food, and reliable food sources safeguarded for the future. But varying light levels mean that plant growing conditions aren't always consistent, as Katie Haylor has been finding out...

In March 2016 the public voted to name a new polar research vessel "Boaty McBoatface", ultimately though, it was decided that "RRS Sir David Attenborough" was a more fitting choice. But the name "Boaty McBoatface" lived on and was instead given to one of the ship's autonomous submarine vehicles. Now, data from Boaty's first research mission in Antarctica has revealed a worrying new mechanism related to rising sea levels. Boaty has discovered that winds above the southern ocean, which have been strengthening in recent years, due in part to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, are driving warmer surface water down into the depths of the ocean and warming the water right at the bottom of our oceans. Warmer oceans mean melting ice caps, so this new discovery is vital to help us accurately predict the rate that global sea levels will rise and plan for the consequences. Heather Jameson spoke to Southampton University's Alberto Naveira Garabato who led the project.

Robots are increasingly used to take over repetitive tasks in industry and agriculture, but they are still limited in what they can do. This also means that humans still need to work alongside them and often things can go badly wrong. 13000 injuries and 60 deaths were caused by accidents due to contact with machinery between 2014-18 in the UK alone. Engineers are working on ways to make robots safer, cheaper and more efficient. Ankita Anirban speaks to Matthias Althoff from the Technische Universitt Mnchen, in Germany, about his recent work on modular robots.

The world is facing a global fish issue - a fissue, if you will. One third of all fish stocks are being overfished, and most of the efforts to prevent this involve exclusive zones in the ocean managed by individual countries. But a study released this week shows how the world's fisheries are all closely connected in a "small-world" network, and how overfishing in one zone can affect all of its neighbours. Izzie Clarke spoke with James Rising from the London School of Economics to find out how.

The chest disease asthma is becoming more common. It can lead to life-threatening breathing difficulties when the airways constrict and the lung tissue overproduces mucus; this is usually an allergic reaction that can be worsened by air pollution. But our understanding of what's going on in an asthmatic lung is still quite limited. But now for the first time, scientists at the Sanger Institute near Cambridge have used a new technique to document and examine every cell in lung samples from both healthy and asthmatic patients, to discover what's changing when a person develops asthma. Chris Smith spoke to researcher Felipe Vieira Braga.

Holes in the Antarctic sea ice have been forming for decades, and are a mystery to science

When it comes to understanding how the brain functions, scientists have done a great deal of work on studying macaque monkeys, our evolutionary relative. We share 93% of our DNA and in a lot of ways, our brains are very similar. Even for high level operations such as learning, memory and decision-making, our brains work in comparable ways.. However, when it comes to sound, scientists have discovered that humans seem to have a unique edge in how we perceive pitch. Ankita Anirban spoke to Bevil Conway, from the National Institute of Health in Maryland, on his recent work comparing how humans and monkeys respond to sound.

At the end of 2018, Walkers launched their own recycling scheme for crisp packets after more than 300,000 people signed an online petition demanding that they change to a fully recyclable material for their packaging. Crisp packets are made from plastic and coated with a thin layer of metal. The metal layer is essential to prolong the shelf life of the food by providing a barrier to oxygen and water, but it makes the packets very difficult to recycle. Aiming to tackle this problem is Dermot O'Hare and his team at the University of Oxford, who have developed a new coating using nano-technology which, they say, could produce fully recyclable crisp packets and other plastic food packaging. Heather Jameson spoke to Dermot to learn more

CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Long name, but easy to picture: the sequence is synonymous to a word processor for a book, the book being DNA, which allows scientists to not only read the book, but to also edit a specific 'passage' of the book. Using CRISPR technology, DNA edits were performed on female twin embryos by Chinese scientist Jiankui He, who has since lost his standing in the scientific community. Xinzhu Wei Rasmus Nielsen, from the University of California Berkeley, followed up with the birth of the twins in an article published in the journal Nature Medicine and found a 21% increase in early mortality for the mutated genes. Matthew Hall visited Florian Merkle, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Metabolic Science right here in the University of Cambridge, to discuss the goal of He's experiment.

Around 1.4 million people alive in the UK today have survived a heart attack, but survivors can suffer from debilitating heart failure, because the heart is damaged during the attack. Ten years ago The Naked Scientists spoke to Sian Harding from Imperial College London about some promising new "heart patches" that could be grown in the lab. Ten years on, production is more reliable and plentiful, and it's hoped that safety trials on humans could begin within the next couple of years. Heather Jameson spoke to Sian to learn more...

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria evolve to sidestep the drugs we use to kill them. With resistance rising, we could be facing an "antibiotic apocalypse", where even trivial infections become untreatable. What's worse, almost no new antibiotics are being developed by the major pharmaceutical companies. Now, though, Kirsty Smitten has uncovered a new option based on the heavy metal ruthenium. It can destroy antibiotic resistant bacteria, including those known as gram negatives, traditionally regarded as much harder to treat...

To better understand how personal exposure to air pollution can impact an individual's health, Katie Haylor met up with Cambridge University chemist Lia Chatzidiakou for a walk around central Cambridge. And to find out how air pollution can be monitored across a whole city, Katie climbed up to the roof of Cambridge University's chemistry department with Cambridge University chemist Lekan Popoola....

Researchers have gained new insights into how bacteria move in complex environments. Bacteria move using a system called "swim-and-tumble": they swim in a straight line for a bit, then tumble in a circle, which gives them a chance to correct their course. They can't see where they're going - they can't see at all - but they can sense and follow gradients of increasing concentration of food, like following a delicious smell into the kitchen. This type of movement is called chemotaxis, with the chemical that's attracting them being called a chemoattractant. Chemotaxis has been well studied in bacteria moving in a clear area. But in the real world, such as inside the human body, bacteria often have to get past a lot of obstacles. So how do obstacles affect bacterial movement? Ruby Osborn spoke to Dr Sabrina Rashid, from Carnegie Mellon University, about how bacteria fare in special obstacle courses built into tiny chambers.

Geologists from the University of California, Berkeley, found something unexpected in sand samples from Japan. Rather than natural particles, from rocks or plants, these tiny blobs of glass seem to have been formed in an atomic blast, and they might mean that the destroyed buildings of Hiroshima have been hiding in plain sight ever since. Ruby Osborn spoke to Mario Wannier about his research, which has been published in the journal Anthropocene.

Harassment in online communities is not a new phenomenon, but it is a growing one, with 40-46% of people reportedly having experienced it. Communities like reddit, one of the internet's, and the world's largest discussion forums, often have moderation teams responsible for applying self-imposed rules which govern acceptable behaviour. These rules are not always well presented, or well adhered to. Researchers from Princeton University have collaborated with the moderation team at the reddit science discussion community "r/science", to determine how the clear presentation of the expected standards, or social norms within online groups can influence user behaviour. Ben McAllister spoke to J. Nathan Matias...

Everyone's heard of T-Rexes, the twenty-foot-tall monsters that roamed the Earth back in the Late Cretaceous Period. But you may not have heard of their miniature cousin. It's a six foot tall dinosaur called Suskityrannus hazelae, and it gives us a clue about when and how T-Rexes got as big as they did. Sterling Nesbitt is the paleontologist who found the second and most complete fossil of this new dinosaur, but it took him twenty years to put this paper together. Phil Sansom asked him how.

Our society uses - and then throws away - a vast amount of plastic, which then accumulates in the environment. To combat this, in recent years, new types of plastic bags have become available, labelled as "compostable" or "biodegradable." Both of these terms indicate the bag can break down and so avoid pollution, although biodegradable bags take longer than compostable bags. There's also a third type, oxo-biodegradable, which have an additive that should make them decompose a bit faster than standard biodegradable bags. So when you see a plastic bag labelled "biodegradable," how long do you think it takes to break down? Three months? Six months? Well, new research from the University of Plymouth shows that's not quite the case. Ruby Osborn spoke to Imogen Napper, lead author of the study, about how she put plastic bags through their paces.

Caster Semenya, a South African athlete with unusually high testosterone for a woman, has lost her appeal against new regulations from the International Association of Athletics Federations. The regulations set an upper limit on how much testosterone a female athlete is allowed to have compete in middle distance running, and require any woman over this limit to artificially lower her testosterone if she wants to continue competing. Ruby Osborn discusses the story.

Before Britain was a nation of shopkeepers we were a nation of farmers; before that, the population were a bunch of hunter gatherers. But farming didn't catch on here until 1000 years after it had in Europe. Why was always a mystery, but now DNA technology is shedding new light on how this could have happened. Ben McAllister has been looking into the story...

Human babies grow inside their mothers for 40 weeks enclosed in a watery bag that expands as they do. And as the clock ticks during pregnancy, various processes kick in to thin the membrane material that surrounds the baby so that the bag ruptures at the right time to promote labour. But in some cases this happens far too early and can trigger a pre-term birth, and now scientists at Queen Mary University of London have discovered why. And if we know how it works, we might be in a position to discover how to stop it, as Tina Chowdhury explains...

Batteries are in almost everything we use. Our phones, computers, energy storage, even in transport. Typically, to see how well a battery performs, scientists have to charge and discharge them over and over until, ultimately, the battery stops working. This can take years of development and testing, plus it's an expensive process. Now researchers from MIT and Stanford University in America have turned to AI to help. Izzie Clarke spoke to William Chueh who explained how AI has stepped in

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) has recently issued a series of so-called "energy transition pathways". These are essentially routes that we as a society need to follow, in order to prevent global warming from exceeding the limit at which society cannot continue to function. All of these pathways rely on a technology known as "carbon capture", which would capture carbon dioxide from fossil fuel energy plants to prevent it from impacting the atmosphere. As a result, there has been a massive investment of money and resources in this technology. But, some new research from Lancaster University is attempting to figure out if that is actually the right path for society. Ben McAllister spoke to Denes Csala...

The multinational team behind the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which spans the Earth by linking dishes in 8 different countries, have revealed the first images of the supermassive black hole - that has a mass 6 billion times that of our Sun - sitting at the centre of galaxy Messier 87, fifty-five million light years from Earth. For the first time we can see what a black hole - or rather the space around a black hole - looks like. Speaking with Chris Smith to discuss how this was done and what it means, and to answer questions from the Naked Scientists audience, is Cambridge University astronomer Carolin Crawford... (image credit - EHT Collaboration)

Astronomers have used a new camera called the HiPERCAM to analyse a type of small, dim star that has proved elusive to standard cameras. The camera has allowed them to make detailed measurements of this cool subdwarf star 1500 light years away, and it's the first time they've been able to confirm the predicted model of this type of star. Ruby Osborn spoke to Dr Steven Parsons from the University of Sheffield about what makes this star so interesting, and how the HiPERCAM has helped them to study it.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is widely regarded as one of humanity's greatest scientific achievements. The 17 km long accelerator smashes particles together at high speeds, and looks at the products to search for new physics. So far we've learned a tonne about the smallest things in nature, such as quarks - which are tiny particles that make up the atoms that compose people, planets, stars, and everything else we can see. A few years ago, physicists discovered strange new particles known as pentaquarks. We knew they were made up of five quarks bound together, but their properties and structure were a mystery. Now, brand new results from the LHC provide significant insight into the nature of these puzzling particles. Tomasz Skwarnicki, from Syracuse University (in New York) told Ben McAlister all about it, starting with the initial discovery of pentaquarks...

Ever wondered how to get the best wifi reception in your house, given all those floors and walls which can interrupt the signal? Where to position the router and signal boosters, then where people should use their devices to get the best reception? There are so many combinations, making it labour-intensive to move things around and try all the different positions! But complex scenarios like this can be modelled by mathematical equations. Not the six minus what equals four type of equation, really complex ones. Additionally, metamaterials are materials that have a structure that take their properties beyond what is possible from the material alone, often meaning they behave in unexpected ways. Jack Tavener spoke to Nader Engheta from the University of Pennsylvania about how his metamaterials can be used to find fast solutions to many tricky maths problems...

Having an injection is an experience common to us all, and whether you are unfussed by them or they make you feel faint, the actual needle used is the same for everyone and highly standardised. But given different parts of the body are more difficult to inject than others, this is not ideal. Scientists at Harvard Medical School realised this problem and have set about creating a more adaptive solution that could lead to big changes in healthcare. Jack Tavener spoke to Jeff Karp, who co-authored the study, about the challenges his team faced...

US scientists have engineered into yeast the genes needed to make the key chemicals in cannabis. To find out why and what's involved, Chris Smith looked at the paper with York University's Ian Graham, who wasn't involved in the project but has expertise in this area. We last spoke with him in 2015 when he uncovered the genes needed to perform a similar feat so yeast could make morphine.

The agriculture sector is responsible for about 25% of global warming according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so rearing livestock for meat is a significant problem. When ruminant animals such as cows and sheep digest food they burp large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that causes climate change. And growing the crops they are fed adds even more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. It is now possible to cultivate edible meat in a lab, rather than rearing livestock. And because of this, the new technique is often promoted as more environmentally friendly than having herds of cattle. But a new study from the University of Oxford has looked closely at the data, and the situation is not as simple as first though. Jack Tavener spoke to John Lynch who co-authored the study about the impact of meat's potentially promising alternative...

Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, from what should be preventable diseases. Up to date, scientists have been trying to figure out the reasons in each individual case, until now A group from McMaster University in Canada has published a paper which shows for the first time the two common physical characteristics of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Mariana Campos has been talking to Maikel Rheinstadter, who explained what they did and how this could help in the development of new and improved medications.

Scientists have discovered that some grass species have information in their genes that's not come from their parents, and instead think they're stealing genetic information from neighbouring plants. By genetically enhancing themselves, they gain a competitive edge, which helps them thrive in more challenging environments. The species Alloteropsis semialata, a type of tropical grass found in Africa, Asia and Australia, has changed the way it produces energy, a process known as photosynthesis. Jenny Gracie spoke with Luke Dunning from the University of Sheffield, to find out how these plants are changing...

About a quarter of a billion people around the world are affected by asthma, when the lungs' airways constrict, making breathing difficult. For decades we've treated the condition with drugs that relax the muscles in the airways and damp down the immune response that makes the airways tighten in the first place. But, recently, researchers have discovered that asthmatic airways also contain bulkier muscles than they should do. This is caused, they think, by the same inflammatory signals that trigger the airways to constrict. And now they've gone on to show that an experimental drug, called "fevipiprant", that blocks these signals, can prevent - and even reverse - the muscle changes, potentially ushering in a new way to manage asthma. Chris Smith spoke with Chris Brightling from the University of Leicester to find out how the new drug could be used to treat asthma.

Scientists have found a spot in the brain that, when stimulated, triggers laughter and is followed by a sense of calm and happiness that lasts 30 minutes.This discovery has direct implication for tens of thousands of people who undergo open brain surgery, and could be used in the future to treat anxiety, depression, and pain.

Archaeologists working in the UK and in Germany have come across rare examples of what look like ancient wooden spears that would have been used by our ancestors 400,000 years ago. But scientists were pointedly stuck on whether these weapons were just for poking, or if they could have been thrown, like javelins. To find out, Annemieke Milks built replicas of the original spears and asked six experienced, sharp-eyed javelin throwers to see if they could throw them. She told Adam Murphy how they got on

Scientists have given a dieting drug made for humans to mosquitoes in order to curb their appetite. Researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York have worked through hundreds of thousands of molecule-receptor combinations to find the right one able to suppress the mosquito's hunger. As a result, mosquitoes were not interested in seeking a human blood meal and so this method could be used to help stop the spread of deadly diseases. Jenny Gracie spoke with Laura Duvall, lead author of a paper recently published in Cell, to find out why mosquitoes bite us in the first place...

If you are a night owl, getting up in the morning is something that you absolutely dread. On the other hand, morning people jump out of bed ready and chatty. Is this something hardwired? The answer's probably got a lot to do with the genes that influence your body clock. Chris Smith speaks to Samuel Jones from the University of Exeter to find out what the connection is.

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy is a genetic disease which causes the muscle of the heart to thicken. Left untreated, it can lead to heart failure, and it's quite common. But the therapies we have available at the moment treat only the symptoms and don't alter underlying disease course. Now new research from Harvard University, published in Science Translational Medicine, has identified the molecular clockwork that actually causes the condition, and they're testing a new drug that may help to stop it. Adam Murphy spoke to Chris Toepher to hear how...

A new way to capture CO2 from factories or the atmosphere has been developed by researchers in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, located in the United States of America. The new technology uses a different molecule to 'soak up' the CO2 and it is 24% more energy-efficient than the existing technologies. On top of it, the molecules can be reused up to a hundred times, meaning even more savings. This improvement on technology may prove a big step towards large-scale adoption of carbon capture, which could help slow down the effects of climate change. Dr David Fairen-Jimenez from the University of Cambridge comments on the new research from the Oak Ridge lab.

There is a mountain located in the middle of a giant crater on Mars, but how it formed is still a bit of a puzzle for scientists. Investigations of the rocks below the surface of the crater have been helping piece together an answer. The Curiosity Rover currently on Mars has an advanced suite of scientific instruments able to carry out experiments on the Martian surface. Kevin Lewis is a planetary scientist from Johns Hopkins University, who along with help from colleagues, has been able to adapt some of the instruments to work in new ways. Jenny Gracie spoke with him to find out the rover's latest adventure

Lack of sleep or poor sleep is a problem that affects 1 in 3 people in the UK and America. Insufficient sleep is not only a health issue, contributing to heart disease, diabetes and obesity, but also an economic one. There's the direct costs of treating sleep disorders and their numerous side effects, plus the costs associated with reduced productivity, time off work and injuries resulting from fatigue. With such a big problem at hand, we need to think of a solution outside the box. Mariana Campos spoke with Dr Aurore Perrault, formerly from the University of Geneva, now at the Sleep, Cognition and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Concordia University in Montreal. Aurore and her coauthors have just published a study that could rock this problem to its core.

Nearly every cell in the body contains a part called the nucleus which houses the genetic information needed to function. Muscle cells are the largest cells in the body, so they often need multiple nuclei to meet high power demands. New research from the University Massachusetts at Amherst, supports the contradiction of a widely believed theory linking large cells and nuclei numbers. Jenny Gracie spoke with Professor Larry Schwartz to find out why the relationship may no longer be true...