In this episode: 00:45 A nuclear timekeeper that could transform fundamental-physics research. Nuclear clocks — based on tiny shifts in energy in an atomic nucleus — could be even more accurate and stable than other advanced timekeeping systems, but have been difficult to make. Now, a team of researchers have made a breakthrough in the development of these clocks, identifying the correct frequency of laser light required to make this energy transition happen. Ultimately it’s hoped that physicist...
May 08, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ever since scientific enquiry began, people have focused mainly on men, or if studies involve animals, on male mice, male rats or whatever it may be. And this has led to gaps in scientists’ understanding of how diseases, and responses to treatment, and many other things might vary between people of different sexes and genders. These days, mainly thanks to big funders like the NIH introducing new guidelines and mandates, a lot more scientists are thinking about sex and, where appropriate, gender....
May 02, 2024•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:46 Using genomics to explain geographic differences in cancer risk The risk of developing cancer can vary hugely depending on geographic region, but it’s not exactly clear why. To get a better idea, a team has compared the genomes of kidney cancers taken from people around the globe. They reveal a link between geographical locations and specific genetic mutations, suggesting that there are as-yet unknown environmental or chemical exposures in different locations. They hope th...
May 01, 2024•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Many people around the world feel lonely. Chronic loneliness is known to have far-reaching health effects and has been linked to multiple conditions and even early death. But the mechanisms through which feeling alone can lead to poor health is a puzzle. Now, researchers are looking at neurons in the hopes that they may help explain why health issues arise when social needs go unmet. This is an audio version of our Feature Why loneliness is bad for your health Hosted on Acast. See...
Apr 26, 2024•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:46 Optical clocks at sea Optical atomic clocks are the most precise timekeeping devices on the planet, but these devices are huge and difficult to work with, limiting their use outside of the lab. Now, researchers have developed a portable optical clock and demonstrated its robustness by sending it on a perilous sea journey. The team hope that this work will pave the way to more practical uses of optical clocks, such as on satellites where they could help improve the accuracy...
Apr 24, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Humans setting up home in outer space has long been the preserve of science fiction. Now, thanks to advances in technology and the backing of billionaires, this dream could actually be realised. But is it more likely to be a nightmare? Kelly and Zach Weinersmith join us to discuss their new book A City on Mars and some of the medical, environmental and legal roadblocks that may prevent humanity from ultimately settling in space. A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Ha...
Apr 19, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:46 Mysterious methane emission from a cool brown dwarf The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is revealing the makeup of brown dwarfs — strange space objects that blur the line between a planet and a star. And it appears that methane in the atmosphere of one of these objects, named W1935, is emitting infrared radiation. Where the energy comes from is a mystery however, researchers hypothesise that the glow could be caused by an aurora in the object’s atmosphere, perhaps driven...
Apr 17, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:46 Mapping ‘ghost roads’ in tropical forests Across the world, huge numbers of illegal roads have been cut into forests. However, due to their illicit nature, the exact numbers of these roads and their impacts on ecosystems is poorly understood. To address this, researchers have undertaken a huge mapping exercise across the tropical Asia-Pacific region. Their findings reveal over a million kilometers of roads that don’t appear on official maps, and that their construction is ...
Apr 10, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Around the world, rates of cancers that typically affect older adults are increasing in those under 50 years old. Models based on global data predict that the number of early-onset cancer cases like these will increase by around 30% between 2019 and 2030. The most likely contributors — such as rising rates of obesity and early-cancer screening — do not fully account for the increase. To try and understand the reasons behind this trend, many researchers are searching for answers buried in studies...
Apr 05, 2024•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:35 Pregnancy advances your ‘biological’ age — but giving birth turns it back Growing a baby leads to changes in the distribution of certain chemical markers on a pregnant person’s DNA, but new research suggests that after giving birth, these changes can revert to an earlier state. Nature News: Pregnancy advances your ‘biological’ age — but giving birth turns it back 08:07 Bird gestures to say 'after you' A Japanese tit ( Parus minor ) will flutter its wings to invite their ma...
Apr 03, 2024•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 01:28 Inflammation’s role in memory How memories are stored is an ongoing question in neuroscience. Now researchers have found an inflammatory pathway that responds to DNA damage in neurons has a key role in the persistence of memories. How this pathway helps memories persist is unclear, but the researchers suggest that how the DNA damage is repaired may play a role. As inflammation in the brain is often associated with disease, the team were surprised by this finding, which the...
Mar 27, 2024•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast This podcast has been corrected: in a previous version at 5:55 we stated that that the team's 200mm devices currently contain only a couple of magnetic tunnelling junctions, in fact they studied 500-1000 devices in this work. 00:48 How mysterious skyrmions could power next-generation computers Skyrmions are tiny whirlpools of magnetic spin that some researchers believe have useful properties that could unlock new kinds of computing. However getting skyrmions to perform useful computational tasks...
Mar 20, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:45 Making a map of the human heart The human heart consists of multiple, specialised structures that all work together to enable the organ to beat for a lifetime. But exactly which cells are present in each part of the heart has been difficult to ascertain. Now, a team has combined molecular techniques to create an atlas of the developing human heart at an individual cell level. Their atlas provides insights into how cell communities communicate and form different structures....
Mar 13, 2024•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:48 Bumblebees can learn new tricks from each other One behaviour thought unique to humans is the ability to learn something from your predecessors that you couldn’t figure out on your own. However, researchers believe they have shown bumblebees are also capable of this ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ approach to learning. Bees that were taught how to complete a puzzle too difficult to solve on their own, were able to share this knowledge with other bees, raising the pos...
Mar 06, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:49 What caused the Universe to become fully transparent? Around 13 billion years ago, the Universe was filled with a dense ‘fog’ of neutral hydrogen that blocked certain wavelengths of light. This fog was lifted when the hydrogen was hit by radiation in a process known as reionisation, but the source of this radiation has been debated. Now, researchers have used the JWST to peer deep into the Universe’s past and found that charged particles pouring out from dwarf galaxies app...
Feb 28, 2024•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast The phenomenon of animals catching diseases from humans, called reverse zoonoses, has had a severe impact on great ape populations, often representing a bigger threat than habitat loss or poaching. However, while many scientists and conservationists agree that human diseases pose one of the greatest risks to great apes today there are a few efforts under way to use a research-based approach to mitigate this problem. This is an audio version of our Feature Chimpanzees are dying from our colds — t...
Feb 26, 2024•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast The deep haunting tones of the world's largest animals, baleen whales, are iconic - but how the songs are produced has long been a mystery. Whales evolved from land dwelling mammals which vocalize by passing air through a structure called the larynx - a structure which also helps keep food from entering the respiratory system. However toothed whales like dolphins do not use their larynx to make sound, instead they have evolved a specialized organ in their nose. Now a team of researchers hav...
Feb 23, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:45 Why are humans so helpful? Humans are notable for their cooperation and display far more altruistic behaviour than other animals, but exactly why this behaviour evolved has been a puzzle. But in a new paper, the two leading theories have been put the test with a model and a real-life experiment. They find that actually neither theory on its own leads to cooperation but a combination is required for humans to help one another. Research article: Efferson et al. News and View...
Feb 21, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 00:45 Smoking's long-term effects on immunity It's well-known that smoking is bad for health and it has been linked to several autoimmune disorders, but the mechanisms are not fully understood. Now, researchers have investigated the immune responses of 1,000 people. Whilst some effects disappear after quitting, impacts on the T cell response lingers long after. The team hopes that this evidence could help better understand smoking's association with autoimmune diseases. Resea...
Feb 14, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast For over a century, cancer has been classified by areas of the body - lung cancer, breast cancer, skin cancer etc. And yet modern medical research is telling us that the molecular and genetic mechanisms behind cancers are not necessarily tied to parts of the body. Many drugs developed to treat metastatic cancers have the capacity to work across many different cancers, and that presents an opportunity for more tailored and efficient treatments. Oncologists are calling for a change ...
Feb 09, 2024•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 0:46 Borrowing tricks from cancer could help improve immunotherapy T cell based immunotherapies have revolutionised the treatment of certain types of cancer. However these therapies — which involved taking someone’s own T cells and reprogramming them to kill cancer cells — have struggled to treat solid tumours, which put up multiple defences. To overcome these, a team has taken mutations found in cancer cells that help them thrive and put them into therapeutic T cells. Their res...
Feb 07, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Cervical cancer is both treatable and preventable, and the WHO has called for countries to come together to to eliminate the disease in the next century. However the disease still kills over 300,000 people each year, and levels of screening, treatment and vaccination need to be stepped up in order to achieve this goal. These challenges are particularly stark in low- and middle-income countries, where a lack of funding, staffing and infrastructure are obstacles. Vaccine hesitancy, especially in l...
Feb 04, 2024•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 0:48 How hominins spread through Europe Ancient stone tools are often uncovered in Europe, but it can be difficult to identify who crafted them, as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens coexisted in the region for several thousand years. The makers of one type of tool found in northern Europe has long puzzled researchers, but now through genetic analysis of nearby skeletal fragments, it has been revealed that they were made by Homo sapiens. The age of these tools suggests that modern hu...
Jan 31, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Evidence so far suggests that the prevalence of long COVID in low- and middle-income countries could be similar to that of wealthier countries. For example, by some estimates, more than four million people in Brazil have long COVID. However, an absence of research on the condition in less-wealthy countries has left advocates hamstrung: few physicians acknowledge that long COVID exists. A lack of data is also hampering efforts to search for the mechanisms of the condition and tailor treatments. T...
Jan 26, 2024•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 0:46 Turning a toxic by-product into iron Red mud is a toxic by-product of aluminium manufacture, and millions of tonnes of it is produced each year. The majority ends up in landfills, pumped into vast lakes or stored in dried mounds, posing a serious environmental risk. This week, researchers demonstrate how red mud can be reused to make iron, a vital component in the production of steel. As their method uses hydrogen plasma rather than fossil fuels, they suggest it could be a ...
Jan 24, 2024•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 0:55 The AI that deduces solutions to complex maths problems Researchers at Google Deepmind have developed an AI that can solve International Mathematical Olympiad-level geometry problems, something previous AIs have struggled with. They provided the system with a huge number of random mathematical theorems and proofs, which it used to approximate general rules of geometry. The AI then applied these rules to solve the Olympiad problems and show its workings for humans to check. ...
Jan 17, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Nature Podcast , we catch up on some science stories from the holiday period by diving into the Nature Briefing. We chat about: an extra-warm sweater inspired by polar bear fur; the fossil find revealing what a juvenile tyrannosaur liked to snack on; why scientists are struggling to open OSIRIS-REx’s sample container; how 2023 was a record for retractions; and how cats like to play fetch, sometimes. Nature News: Polar bear fur-inspired sweater is thinner than a down jacket...
Jan 10, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2024. We'll hear about the mass of the neutrino, the neural basis of consciousness and the climate lawsuits at the Hague, to name but a few. News: the science events to look our for in 2024 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 03, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Perovskites are cheap, abundant photovoltaic materials that some have hailed as the future of green energy. Around the world, companies are layering perovskites on top of traditional silicon to develop so-called tandem solar cells that some think could deliver at least 20% more power than a silicon cell alone. However, there remain multiple issues to overcome before these products are ready for widespread uptake in the notoriously competitive solar-power market. This is an audio version of our F...
Dec 29, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: 00:54 Franklin’s real role When it comes to the structure of DNA, everyone thinks they know Rosalind Franklin’s role in its discovery. The story goes that her crucial data was taken by James Watson without her knowledge, helping him and Francis Crick solve the structure. However, new evidence has revealed that this wasn’t really the case. Rosalind Franklin was not a ‘wronged heroine’, she was an equal contributor to the discovery. Nature Podcast : 25 April 2023 Comment : What Ro...
Dec 27, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
