Naked Scientists, In Short Special Editions Podcast

Over 3000 people are killed on the world's roads every day with further 20-50 million people left injured or disabled. And whilst the number of serious injuries have come down - one type of injury -damage to the spinal cord - has remained stubbornly high. The car company Volvo have announced that are aiming to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured in one of their vehicles in exac...

A common New year's resolution is to hit the gym and get fit. But while most people might give up and return to the comfort of the sofa by February, research suggests that being physically active for your whole life has big health benefits. But can it slow down the ageing process? One problem with studying this is that most older people are pretty inactive, or sedentary, and tend to do little if a...

Could a brain scan predict your weight, your school grades and your happiness levels two years down the line? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Whether it's an outing to the cinema or gathered in the living room, films are a great way to spend time as a family at Christmas. If children are involved, the choice of title will often be made with them in mind. Reservoir Dogs might be shelved in favour of Shrek, perhaps. We tend to assume that films aimed at children are less likely to involve complex, frightening or upsetting themes, such as...

Last week scientists attending the American Geophysical Union meeting in California unveiled measurements made on Mars by the Curisoity rover, which has been exploring the red planet for the last 2 years. What Curiosity has uncovered are organic molecules and also periodic puffs of methane gas, both of which might be signs that life is, or once was, present on Mars. Chris Smith spoke with the Open...

People often talk about feeling their age, but how old you say you feel is strongly linked to your life expectancy. A new study at UCL in London has shown that people who feel their age, or feel even older than their real chronological are almost 40% more likely to die than someone of the same age who - in their head at least - feels younger, as Andrew Steptoe explains to Chris Smith... Like this...

There's the old saying that if you want to understand someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. But what if you could walk in their actual body? Thanks to virtual reality headsets, this is now - at least virtually - possible. And by fooling people into thinking they have a child's body, or one belonging to someone of a different skin colour, Mel Slater and his colleagues in Barcelona discove...

How do we know about the ancient animals that used to roam the Earth? If all life got its start in the sea, then why do most animals now live on land? Sara Sjosten went behind the scenes at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Science with Sarah Finney to find out more about where fossils come from and one special little creature from 360 million years ago... Like this podcast? Please help us by supportin...

Luis von Ahn invented CAPTCHA - the system that uses a picture of a word to determine whether you are a human or a computer. But when von Ahn realised just how much time was being wasted by filling in CAPTCHAs, he wondered whether that man-power could be used for something good. Now the very same process is digitising millions of books, that are available for free, as von Ahn told Chris Smith. Lik...

What's the science behind the so-called 5:2 or intermittent fasting diet? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Does your dog pay attention to what you say? Thinking back to the last time it rolled in something stinky, or ran off with your socks, you may not be convinced. But new research from the University of Sussex shows that man's best friend is at least listening; and not only to what we say, but how we say it. Georgia Mills spoke to Victoria Ratcliffe, who tested over 200 willing canines... Like this...

Marie Blackman Northwood is a biomedical scientists normally based in Cambridge,who is currently in Sierra Leone, lending her hand to the fight against Ebola. She spoke to Chris Smith about her experiences. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Religion and nature might have more to do with each other than you thought. In the biggest study of its kind, a team of evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, linguists and religious scholars examined the religions of societies from around the world to see if there was any link between where they lived and what they believed. They found that they can predict which societies will worship moralis...

Are you a morning person or a night owl? Whichever you are, your daily rhythm is determined by your circadian clock - powered by a small group of cells in the brain - and it tells you when to get up and when to sleep. Now Professor Bill Wisden and his team at Imperial College have discovered a second biological clock in the brain, located in a little cluster of nerve cells that produce a chemical...

Just a handful of genetic changes are what turned wildcats into domestic pets, scientists have now shown. And many of these changes are linked with genes that affect how the brain processes rewards and pleasure. In other words, humans won over cats by appealing to their desire for kitty treats and stroking. Over time, those that responded best to this nurturing were more likely to be bred by human...

Researchers say that doing anti-social shifts over many years can dent your brain power. In other words you can't think straight. The team collected data from three thousand workers in France, who underwent memory and other tests of brain function. Individuals who had worked shifts for over ten years had the same results as someone six and a half years older than them. But here's the good part. Lu...

Tim Bussey, professor, budding rock star and performer explains to Hannah Critchlow how he's addressing scientific gender inequality with a re-release from the 80s... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Would you prefer your prime minister, president, or beloved leader to look healthy, intelligent, or both? Researchers from the VU University of Amsterdam say that given the choice, people prioritise healthy-looking candidates over intelligent ones. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The quest to understand the fundamental rules governing life has taken another step forward, as new research from the University of Cambridge reveals. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As international trade increases, particularly by sea, we're seeing more stowaways; but not of the human variety. Scientists are reporting that animals and plants are hitching rides around the world on boats - and even on fishing tackle. They then setup home in other countries where, with nothing to eat them, they can become dangerously invasive. Timothy Revell spoke to David Aldridge an expert in...

Whilst Magic - a young golden retriever - may love chasing a stick, curling up on a rug and enjoying a biscuit as much as the next dog, he is certainly no ordinary dog. Trained by Milton Keynes based organisation Medical Detection Dogs, he can sniff out when his owner Claire Pesterfield, a sufferer of Type 1 diabetes, is about to suffer an attack brought on by low blood sugar levels, that could le...

This week in the Planet Earth Podcast: Tamara Galloway, Matt Cole and Ceri Lewis of the University of Exeter talk about their research on the effects of fragments of plastics from food packaging, drinks bottles and even facial scrubs on marine wildlife. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Which part of our brain helped us become the social and (for the most part) intelligent creatures we are today? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Thousands die due to alcohol consumption each year, did raising the price of alcohol in the UK reduce these costs? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Until recently when technology took over, a coal miner's best friend was a caged canary that would warn of a build-up of life-threatening gases. Now US scientists are saying that the sense of smell is the coalmine canary of human health, with people who fail a smell test being at much greater odds of dying within the following 5 years. Jay Pinto, from the University of Chicago, tested over 3000 ov...