Naked Scientists Special Editions

The quest to understand the fundamental rules governing life has taken another step forward, as new research from the University of Cambridge reveals.

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 invasive species about the UK's most recent arrival.

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 lead to her losing consciousness. By alerting and getting assistance, this extraordinary dog helps Claire lead a more ordinary life. Amelia Perry spoke to Claire, at Addenbrooks Hosptial, where she is the Lead Children's Diabetes Nurse...

In this episode of the eLife podcast we hear about the spread of the Ebola virus, the financial costs of research misconduct, aging in yeast, grooming in flies, and symbiosis between bacteria and fungal cells.

Thousands die due to alcohol consumption each year, did raising the price of alcohol in the UK reduce these costs?

Which part of our brain helped us become the social and (for the most part) intelligent creatures we are today?

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 over 55s on their ability to correctly identify rose, leather, fish, orange, and peppermint smells. He told Chris Smith about how he followed them up five years later, of those who failed the smell test, half were dead.

Hydrogen is regarded as an excellent candidate future fuel on the grounds that it is relatively easy to store and it burns cleanly to produce only heat and water. But present methods of production involve fossil fuels and are energy intensive, offsetting any benefits of the hydrogen. Instead, scientists would like to use electricity from renewable sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, with solar power being one obvious choice. Unfortunately, current silicon-based cells cannot produce a sufficiently high output voltage individually, meaning that several of them need to be linked together in series. But, this week, a new generation of solar cells has been unveiled. They're made from a lead-based material called Perovskite, which is more up to the job, as science writer Mark Peplow explains...

You can forget Jurassic Park because actually dinosaurs are all around us! And I'm not joking because the fact is that when you see a chirping bird, you're actually looking at a modern dinosaur. Evidence has been growing for some time that our feathered friends are descended from small carnivorous dinosaurs called therapods. For example, the arrangement of bones in a bird's fingers, encased in the wing, is very similar to the bones in fossilised therapods. But there are still some biologists who study early development, as a chick grows in an egg, who aren't convinced by the dinosaur story.Now a new paper from scientists in Chile provides more evidence in favour of dinosaurs - and it all seems to hinge on their wrists. Kat Arney spoke to Paul Upchurch, from UCL's Earth Sciences department, to find out more.

During an asthma attack, inflammation in the airways leads to breathlessness, and severe cases can end up with sufferers being hospitalised or even dying. One culprit that can make asthma worse is the virus that causes the common cold, known as rhinovirus. But why does a cold mean a runny nose and feeling a bit grotty for most people, but can lead to dangerous breathing problems in asthmatics? Kat spoke to Imperial College's David Jackson, who's one of a team that has been finding out.

We've all heard that whales and dolphins have a highly developed way of making sounds to communicate with each. However when it come to ordinary fish you'd have thought they're pretty silent things. But you'd be wrong. Marine biologist Erica Staaterman from the University of Miami believes that most animals in the ocean including crabs, lobsters, shrimp and fish make sounds. In a new study she shows, for the first time, that 30 day old baby gray snapper fish speak to each other in order to stick together in the sea. Hannah Critchlow's been hearing from Erica, and her little snappers, over the line from Florida.....

A cardiac arrest is when a person's heart stops beating and they collapse. It affects 30,000 people every year in the UK. The majority of these occur outside the hospital setting and they're frequently fatal. But how should they be managed - by attempting to resuscitate the victim at the scene, or by rushing them to hospital in an Ambulance? Emergency Medicine specialist Bruce Adams, from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio says bringing the patient in is the best call, but Bristol-based emergency medicine consultant Jonathan Benger disagrees and says that calling an Ambulance is a waste of resources and doesn't improve outcomes...

Are you a strategic decision maker? Is your brain anterior cingulate cortex switched off or on? Are random decisions being made or are you basing them entirely on past experience? Alla Karpova discusses decision-making...

World leaders had been planning for a world population of about 9 billion by 2050. But now a new analysis, based on fresh data and more advanced statistical methods, suggests that this estimate might be wildly inaccurate and that the real figure might be more than 12 billion, which means population policy might need a major rethink. Adrian Raftery at the University of Washington is the author of the new study...

Wireless connections are everywhere now. Perhaps you're listening to us through your smartphone or laptop, or maybe you have one of those new-fangled smart fridges connected to the internet.Technologists now talk about the internet of things, where objects around us are all connected up using wireless radio technology, and the potential applications are wide-reaching, from labelling banknotes to tiny bio-sensors for monitoring health.But one limiting factor is the size of the radio transmitter - a problem that may have now been solved by engineers in California. They've developed a miniaturised radio device - roughly the size of an ant - that sits on a silicon chip.