00:46 Physicists spot new types of high-energy radiation in thunderstorms Physicists have identified new forms of γ-ray radiation created inside thunderclouds, and shown that levels of γ-ray production are much higher on Earth than previously thought. Scientists already knew about two types of γ-ray phenomena in thunderclouds — glows that last as long as a minute and high-intensity flashes that come and go in only a few millionths of a second. Now, researchers have identified that these both occ...
Oct 02, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The world's fastest supercomputer, known as Frontier, is located at the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This machine churns through data at record speed, outpacing 100,000 laptops working simultaneously. With nearly 50,000 processors, Frontier was designed to push the bounds of human knowledge. It's being used to create open-source large language models to compete with commercial AI systems, simulate proteins for drug development, help improve aeropla...
Sep 27, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:46 Unravelling why children with Down’s syndrome are at a higher risk of leukaemia Children with Down’s syndrome have a 150-fold increased risk of developing leukaemia than those without the condition. Now, an in-depth investigation has revealed that changes to genome structures in fetal liver stem-cells appear to be playing a key role in this increase. Down’s syndrome is characterised by cells having an extra copy of chromosome 21. The team behind this work saw that in liver...
Sep 25, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:45 The biggest black hole jets ever seen Astronomers have spotted a pair of enormous jets emanating from a supermassive black hole with a combined length of 23 million light years — the biggest ever discovered. Jets are formed when matter is ionized and flung out of a black hole, creating enormous and powerful structures in space. Thought to be unstable, physicists had theorized there was a limit to how large these jets could be, but the new discovery far exceeds this, sugges...
Sep 18, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:45 What ancient DNA has revealed about Rapa Nui’s past Ancient DNA analysis has further demonstrated that the people of Rapa Nui did not cause their own population collapse, further refuting a controversial but popular claim. Rapa Nui, also known as Easter island, is famous for its giant Moai statues and the contested idea that the people mismanaged their natural resources leading to ‘ecological suicide’. Genomes sequenced from the remains of 15 ancient islanders showed no ev...
Sep 11, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The often repeated claim that "80% of the world's biodiversity is found in the territories of Indigenous Peoples" appears widely in policy documents and reports, yet appears to have sprung out of nowhere. According to a group of researchers, including those from Indigenous groups, this baseless statistic could be undermining the conservation efforts of the Indigenous People it's meant to support and prevent further work to really understand how best to conserve biodiversity. Two of the authors j...
Sep 06, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:45 Why a 'nuclear clock' is now within researchers’ reach Researchers have made a big step towards the creation of the long theorized nuclear clock, by getting the most accurate measurement of the frequency of light required to push thorium nuclei into a higher energy state. Such a timekeeper would differ from the best current clocks as their ‘tick’ corresponds to the energy transitions of protons and neutrons, rather than electrons. Nuclear clocks have the potential to be mo...
Sep 04, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The 'file-drawer problem', where findings with null or negative results gather dust and are left unpublished, is well known in science. There has been an overriding perception that studies with positive or significant findings are more important, but this bias can have real-world implications, skewing perceptions of drug efficacies, for example. Multiple efforts to get negative results published have been put forward or attempted, with some researchers saying that the incentive structures in aca...
Aug 30, 2024•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:31 Chatbots makes racist judgements on the basis of dialect Research has shown that large language models, including those that power chatbots such as ChatGPT, make racist judgements on the basis of users’ dialect. If asked to describe a person, many AI systems responded with racist stereotypes when presented with text written in African American English — a dialect spoken by millions of people in the United States that is associated with the descendants of enslaved African A...
Aug 28, 2024•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast For millennia, humanity has obsessed about halting ageing and, ultimately, preventing death. Yet while advances in medicine and public-health have seen human life-expectancy more than double, our maximum lifespan stubbornly remains around 120 years. On the latest episode of Nature hits the books , Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan joins us to discuss what scientists have learnt about the molecular processes underlying ageing, whether they can be prevented, and why the quest for longevity also ne...
Aug 22, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:46 Old AIs can’t learn new tricks An algorithm that reactivates dormant ‘neurons’ in deep learning based AIs could help them overcome their inability to learn new things and make future systems more flexible, research has shown. AIs based on deep learning struggle to learn how to tackle new tasks indefinitely, making them less adaptable to new situations. The reasons for this are unclear, but now a team has identified that ‘resetting’ parts of the neural networks underlying these systems can ...
Aug 21, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:48 The mystery of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone Stonehenge’s central stone came from Northern Scotland, more than 600 miles away from the monument, according to a new analysis of its geochemistry. It is commonly accepted that many of the rocks that make up the iconic neolithic monument came from Wales, 150 miles from the site. Previously, it had been thought that a central stone, called the Altar Stone, had also come from this area, known as the Preseli Hills. The new work suggests that the ancien...
Aug 14, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast AIs built on Large Language Models have wowed by producing particularly fluent text. However, their ability to do this is limited in many languages. As the data and resources used to train a model in a specific language drops, so does the performance of the model, meaning that for some languages the AIs are effectively useless. Researchers are aware of this problem and are trying to find solutions, but the challenge extends far beyond just the technical, with moral and social questions to be ans...
Aug 09, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:48 Plant trait diversity in drylands A study reveals that, unexpectedly, plants display a greater diversity of traits in drier environments. Trait diversity is a measure of an organism's performance in an environment and can include things like the size of a plant or its photosynthetic rate. Whilst there are good data on this kind of diversity in temperate regions, an assessment of drylands has been lacking. The new study fills this knowledge gap and finds that, counter to a prevailing expect...
Aug 07, 2024•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:45 Increasing the energy efficiency of light-based computers Computer components based on specialised LEDs could reduce the energy consumption of power hungry AI systems, according to new research. AI chips with components that compute using light can run more efficiently than those using digital electronics, but these light-based systems typically use lasers that can be bulky and difficult to control. To overcome these obstacles, a team has developed a way to replace these lasers with LEDs, ...
Jul 31, 2024•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast In India, a group of researchers raced to develop a CRISPR-based genome editing therapy to save the life of a young woman with a rare neurodegenerative disease. Despite a valiant effort, the pace of research was ultimately too slow to save her life. While many are convinced that these therapies could offer hope to those with overlooked genetic conditions, it will likely take years to develop the techniques needed to quickly create bespoke treatments, something people in need don't have. This is ...
Jul 26, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:48 A rapid way to identify serious bacterial infections A newly-developed method that can rapidly identify the type of bacteria causing a blood-infection, and the correct antibiotics to treat it, could save clinicians time, and patient lives. Blood infections are serious, and can lead to the life-threatening condition sepsis, but conventional diagnostic methods can take days to identify the causes. This new method does away with some of the time-consuming steps, and the researchers behind it ...
Jul 24, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 01:04 A gel to safely transport proteins A gel that encases proteins could be a new way to safely transport medicines without requiring them to be kept cold, according to new research. To test it, the team behind the work posted themselves a protein suspended in this gel, showing that it was perfectly preserved and retained its activity, despite being dropped in transit and exposed to varying temperatures. The researchers hope this gel will help overcome the need to freeze protein-based medicine...
Jul 17, 2024•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:45 In situ editing of the gut microbiome Researchers have developed a method to directly edit the genes of specific bacteria in the guts of live mice, something that has previously been difficult to accomplish due to the complexity of this environment. The tool was able to edit over 90% of an E. coli strain colonising mice guts, with other work showing the tool could be used to edit genes in pathogenic bacterial species and strains. It is hoped that with further research this technique could ...
Jul 10, 2024•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:47 Searching for dark matter in black holes Researchers have been scanning the skies looking for black holes that formed at the very beginning of the Universe — one place where elusive and mysterious dark matter is thought to be located. If these black holes did contain dark matter, they would be especially massive and so researchers would be able to see the bending of light as they pass in front of stars. Such events would be rare, so to find them researchers trawled through a decades-long d...
Jul 03, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 2026, NASA aims to send humans back to the Moon's surface, as part of the Artemis III mission. In preparation, astronauts have been performing moonwalking simulations to ensure that they are able to make the most of their precious time on the lunar surface. In one dress rehearsal, a pair of astronauts took part in a training exercise in an Arizona volcanic field, working with a science team to practice doing geology work in difficult conditions designed to mimic some that will be experienced ...
Jun 28, 2024•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:31 How open are ‘open source’ AI systems? Many of the large language models powering AI systems are described as ‘open source’ but critics say this is a misnomer, with restricted access to code and training data preventing researchers from probing how these systems work. While the definition of open source in AI models is yet to be agreed, advocates say that ‘full’ openness is crucial in efforts to make AI accountable. New research has ranked the openness of different systems, showing that de...
Jun 26, 2024•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:46 How light touches are sensed during sex 150 years after they were discovered, researchers have identified how specific nerve-cell structures on the penis and clitoris are activated. While these structures, called Krause corpuscles, are similar to touch-activated corpuscles found on people’s fingers and hands, there was little known about how they work, or their role in sex. Working in mice, a team found that Krause corpuscles in both male and females were activated when exposed to low-freq...
Jun 19, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:48 Short-haul spaceflight's effect on the human body. A comprehensive suite of biomedical data, collected during the first all-civilian spaceflight, is helping researchers unpick the effects that being in orbit has on the human body. Analysis of data collected from the crew of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission reveals that short duration spaceflight can result in physiological changes similar to those seen on longer spaceflights. These changes included things like alterations in immune-cell funct...
Jun 12, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:46 Making a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate For the first time, researchers have coaxed molecules into a bizarre form of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which they all act in a single gigantic quantum state. While condensates have been made using atoms for decades, the complex interactions of molecules have prevented them from being cooled into this state. Now, a team has successfully made a Bose-Einstein condensate using molecules made of caesium and sodium a...
Jun 05, 2024•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:25 What the rise of AI language models means for robots Companies are melding artificial intelligence with robotics, in an effort to catapult both to new heights. They hope that by incorporating the algorithms that power chatbots it will give robots more common-sense knowledge and let them tackle a wide range of tasks. However, while impressive demonstrations of AI-powered robots exist, many researchers say there is a long road to actual deployment, and that safety and reliab...
May 29, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Growing up in Alabama in the 1960s, mathematician Freeman Hrabowski was moved to join the civil rights moment after hearing Martin Luther King Jr speak. Even as a child, he saw the desperate need to make change. He would go on to do just that — at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, one of the leading pathways to success for Black students in STEM subjects in the United States. Freeman is the subject of the first in a new series of Q&a...
May 28, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast AIs are often described as 'black boxes' with researchers unable to to figure out how they 'think'. To better understand these often inscrutable systems, some scientists are borrowing from psychology and neuroscience to design tools to reverse-engineer them, which they hope will lead to the design of safer, more efficient AIs. This is an audio version of our Feature: How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...
May 24, 2024•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:45 The neuroscience of fentanyl addiction Research in mice has shown that fentanyl addiction is the result of two brain circuits working in tandem, rather than a single neural pathway as had been previously thought. One circuit underlies the positive feelings this powerful drug elicits, which the other was responsible for the intense withdrawal when it is taken away. Opioid addiction leads to tens of thousands of deaths each year, and the team hopes that this work will help in the development...
May 22, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:45 A recyclable 3D printing resin from an unusual source Many 3D printers create objects using liquid resins that turn into robust solids when exposed to light. But many of these are derived from petrochemicals that are difficult to recycle. To overcome this a team has developed a new type of resin, which they’ve made using a bodybuilding supplement called lipoic acid. Their resin can be printed, recycled and reused multiple times, which they hope could in future contribute t...
May 15, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
