Nature Podcast

00:46 Artemis 1 is go! NASA’s Artemis 1 mission has successfully reached Earth orbit. After weeks of delays and issues, and a nail biting launch, the rocket marks the first step in a new era of moon exploration, with plans to test a new way to return astronauts to the moon. We caught up with reporter for all-things-space, Alex Witze, for the latest. News: Lift off! Artemis Moon rocket launch kicks...

Kathleen Folbigg has spent nearly 20 years in prison after being convicted of killing her four children. But in 2018, a group of scientists began gathering evidence that suggested another possibility for the deaths — that at least two of them were attributable to a genetic mutation that can affect heart function. A judicial inquiry in 2019 failed to reverse Folbigg’s conviction, but this month, th...

00:49 Separating heavy water with molecular cages Heavy water is molecule very similar to H2O but with deuterium isotopes in the place of hydrogen atoms. Heavy water is useful in nuclear reactions, drug design and nutritional studies, but it's difficult to separate from normal water because they have such similar properties. Now, a team have developed a new separation method using tiny molecular c...

Companies are offering genetic tests of embryos generated by in vitro fertilization that they say allow prospective parents to choose those with the lowest risk for diseases such as diabetes or certain cancers. However, some researchers are concerned about the accuracy and ethics of these tests. This is an audio version of our Feature: The controversial embryo tests that promise a better baby Host...

00:46 How flies can move their eyes (a little) It's long been assumed flies’ eyes don’t move, and so to alter their gaze they need to move their heads. Now, researchers have shown that this isn’t quite true and that fruit flies can actually move their retinas using a specific set of muscles, which may allow them to perceive depth. The team also hope that this movement may provide a window into som...

When COVID-19 hit it didn't kill indiscriminately. In the US, being Black, Hispanic, or Native American meant you had a much greater risk of death than if you were white. And these disparities are mirrored across the world. In this episode we explore the complex tale behind this disparity. Throughout history, racism and biases have been embedded within medical technology, along the clinicians who...

In this episode: 00:54 Siberian cave offers first-ever glimpse into Neanderthal family By analysing ancient DNA recovered from bone fragments found in two Siberian caves, researchers have identified a set of closely related Neanderthals: a father and daughter, as well as several other more-distant relatives. The work suggests that Neanderthal communities were small, and that females may have left...

In this episode: 00:45 Implanted brain organoids could offer new insights into disease Brain organoids — lab-grown, self-organizing structures made of stem cells — are used in research to better understand brain development and disease progression. However, these structures lack connections seen in real brains, limiting their usefulness. To overcome this, a team has now transplanted human organoid...

In this episode: 00:46 A virtual chemical library uncovers potential antidepressants Certain psychedelic drugs are of interest to researchers due to their promising antidepressant effects. To help speed up the discovery of molecules with useful properties, researchers have built a virtual library of 75 million compounds related to these drugs. This approach yielded two molecules that showed a...

The ongoing war in Ukraine has devastated the global economy, rocked geopolitics, killed thousands of people and displaced millions. Science too has been affected and the impacts on research are being felt more widely than just in Ukraine and Russia. In this episode of Nature 's Takes we discuss the war's impact on publishing, international collaborations, climate change and energy, and the destru...

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries introduced strict lockdowns to help prevent spread of the disease. Since then, researchers have been studying the effects of these measures to help inform responses to future crises. Conclusions suggest that countries that acted swiftly to bring in strict measures did best at preserving lives and their economies, but analysing the competing...

In this episode: 00:45 Piecing together the early history of jawed vertebrates A wealth of fossils discovered in southern China shed new light onto the diversity of jawed and jawless fish during the Silurian period, over 400 million years ago. Nature editor Henry Gee explains the finds and what they mean for the history of jawed vertebrates like us. Research article: Zhu et al. Research article: G...

00:46 Inequalities in US faculty hiring In the US, where a person gained their PhD can have an outsized influence on their future career. Now, using a decade worth of data, researchers have shown there are stark inequalities in the hiring process, with 80% of US faculty trained at just 20% of institutions. Research article: Wapman et al. 09:01 Research Highlights How wildlife can influence chocola...

00:46 Synthetic cells made from bacterial bits For years researchers have been interested in creating artificial cells, as they could be useful for manufacturing compounds and understanding how life works. Now a new method shows how this can be accomplished using polymer droplets that integrate components of burst bacteria. The synthesised cells are able to perform translation and transcription an...

00:46 Evidence of ancient surgery A skeleton with an amputated foot discovered in Borneo has been dated to 31,000 years ago, suggesting that complex surgery might be much older than previously thought. The person whose foot was removed survived the procedure, which the researchers behind the find say shows the ‘surgeon’ must have had detailed knowledge of anatomy, and likely had access to antisept...

The development of brain chimaeras – made up of human and animal neurons – is an area of research that has hugely expanded in the past five years. Proponents say that these systems are yielding important insights into health and disease, but others say the chimeras represent an ethical grey zone, because of the potential to blur the line between humans and other animals, or to recapitulate human-l...

In this episode: 00:45 How adding pores helps water carry gas Although water is an excellent solvent, it’s limited in its ability to dissolve gasses. To overcome this a team have developed ‘porous water’ containing tiny cages that can hold large numbers of gas molecules. The team suggest that this technology could have multiple medical applications, including in the development of artificial blood...

00:47 Evidence of a proton’s charm For decades, scientists have debated whether protons have ‘intrinsic charm’, meaning they contain elementary particles known as charm quarks. Now, using machine learning to comb through huge amounts of experimental data, a team have shown evidence that the charm quark can be found within a proton, which may have important ramifications in the search for new physi...

In this first episode of Nature's Take, we get four of Nature's staff around microphones to get their expert take on preprints. These pre-peer-review open access articles have spiked in number over recent years and have cemented themselves as an integral part of scientific publishing. But this has not been without its issues. In this discussion we cover a lot of ground. Amongst other things, we as...

Cold exposure in mice activates brown fat to deny tumours glucose, and the future of extreme heatwaves. 00:45 How cold temperatures could starve tumours A team of researchers have found that exposing mice to the cold could starve tumour cells of the blood glucose they need to thrive. They showed that the cold temperatures deprived the tumours of fuel by activating brown fat – a tissue that burns t...

00:47 The economic benefits of social connections By looking at data gathered from billions of Facebook friendships, researchers have shown that having more connections with people from higher income groups could increase future incomes by 20%. They also show how such connections can be formed, and how schools and other institutions could help to improve peoples’ opportunities in the future. Resea...

Inequity has been a central feature of the COVID19 pandemic. From health outcomes to access to vaccines, COVID has pushed long-standing disparities out of the shadows and into the public eye and many of these problems are global. In this episode of  Coronapod  we dig into a radical new collaboration of 15 countries - co-led by the WHO, and modelled on open-science. The project, called th...

00:45 Working out how the ability to digest milk spread Humans have been drinking milk for thousands of years, but it seems that they were doing so long before the ability to digest it became prevalent. Then around 2000 years ago, this ability became common in Europe, presenting a mystery to researchers – why then? Now by analyzing health data, ancient DNA, and fats residues from thousands of anci...

00:46 When did mammals start to regulate their temperature? The evolution of ‘warm bloodedness’ allowed mammals to live in a more diverse range of habitats, but working out when this occurred has been difficult. To try and pin down a date, researchers have studied the fossilised remains of ancient mammals' inner ears, which suggest that this key evolutionary leap appeared around 230 million years...

00:46 A long-term record of climate in the tropics To understand the history of the Earth’s climate, researchers often rely on things like ice cores, which contain layered frozen insights of thousands of years of history. However, in the tropics long-term records like these have been absent. Now researchers have uncovered a sediment core in Peru which reveals around 700,000 years of climatic histo...