Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

Seals are using windfarms and under sea pipelines as bases for their hunting and fishing exploits. St Andrews University scientist Deborah Russell and her Dutch colleagues glued GPS trackers to the fur of seals living along the coastlines of Germany and the UK near two active windfarms. The tags beamed back high-resolution data on the movements of the animals which the team were able to plot on maps. It then helped them understand how the seals and their prey are interacting with the windfarms and other new structures in their environment. She spoke to Chris Smith to explain... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Marshall Montrose, of the University of Cincinnati, explained to Chris Smith how these gut bacteria, present in half the population's stomachs, can cause problems. Small wounds in the stomach lining, caused by things like aspirin, are quickly and effectively converged upon by these tiny microbes. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Ifat Levy from Yale University explains to Kat Arney her recent study which looked at participants ability to learn in a task which exposed them to images of money and food. Obese women who were exposed to images of food during the task, showed impaired learning. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Fruit flies to understand getting our sleep bank account in credit, how we perceive passing of time to help make up our minds in tricky situations. Plus in the news, people prefer shocks to thought. How long could you be left alone with your thoughts? 10 seconds? A minute? Reporting from the Federation of Neurosciences Society Forum in Milan on the hot breaking neuroscience research. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Would you kill a person to save five others? Does religion evade morality by omission? And can you tweak people's motivations? Reporting on Morality and Motivation in Milan, with breaking hot neuroscience research presented at the FENS 2014 conference. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Every year the Royal Society hosts the Summer Science exhibition, where members of the public get a chance to see some of the amazing work being done by scientists around the UK. The Naked Scientists take a look around to meet the world's clumsiest dinosaur and find out more about 3D selfies... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

How long could you be left alone with your thoughts? 10 seconds? A minute? Well, according to a new study published in the journal Science, people really don't like to be left alone with nothing to do other than think. In fact, when participants of this study were given the choice of thinking for up to 15 minutes or giving themselves a painful electric shock, 67% of men and a quarter of women would rather electrocute themselves. So why do people find thinking so un-enjoyable? Professor Timothy Wilson, psychologist at the University of Virginia, led the study and he spoke to Graihagh Jackson... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Neonicotinoids are a group of chemical used as a pesticide on crops. In fact, they're so effective at killing pests, they're currently the most widely used insecticide in the world.These chemicals target the nervous system by mimicking the actions of nicotine, a natural plant toxin. They block signals between nerve cells, causing paralysis and death.However, a study commissioned by the International Union for Conservation of Nature has concluded that these neonicotinoids also are deadly to many beneficial creatures - from earthworms to sparrows - and have even been linked to the decline of... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Passwords are a tricky business, with thousands of people forgetting them every day, and some being hacked or guessed. The University of York has tested the idea of using recognisable faces which are unique to us, instead of written passwords, as proof of our identity. Rob Jenkins, a psychologist who lead the study, tells Kat Arney more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

It's not just conversations that we share with our mobiles, but also our bacterial blueprints! According to Oregon scientist James Meadow, every time you interact with your phone you deposit a bug fingerprint unique to you. And this means that our mobiles could actually be used to track how we pick up and exchange microbes with the world around us and even screen doctors and nurses to see who might be carrying potentially harmful bugs.Chris Smith spoke to James Meadow to find out more. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As of midnight on Tuesday, the herb "qat" became a Class C drug. Users chew the leaves of this east African flowering plant to achieve a buzz which, some say, is similar to caffeine. The ban is surprising because the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs have argued that there isn't sufficient evidence that qat causes health problems to justify a ban. David Nutt is professor of neuropharmocology at Imperial College London and spoke to Chris Smith about the stimulant. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Using a cheap chemical used normally to make tofu stick together, scientists at the University of Liverpool have stumbled upon a much more environmentally-friendly and cheaper way to manufacture very light-weight solar panels called thin film photovoltaics. Science writer Mark Peplow explains the significance of the find to Chris Smith... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

You've probably heard the idea that stress gives you a heart attack, and we certainly know that it is a risk factor, along with things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and smoking. But exactly how stress affects the body to increase the chances of having a heart attack is a bit of a mystery. Now a team of US and German scientists think they might have figured it out. It turns out that stress increases the number of immune cells, known as white blood cells, in atherosclerotic plaques - the fatty blobs that clog up your veins and give you a dicky ticker. Lead researcher... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis or the '100 day cough', kills around 300,000 people per year, but is one of the most common diseases that can be prevented by vaccine. Children in Britain are vaccinated several times before starting school. But, scientists at Oxford University have discovered that these vaccines might not be doing enough. When examining children seeing their GP about a persistent cough, one in five of them actually had a case of whooping cough, including children who had been vaccinated against it. Kay Wang, who lead the study, told Chris Smith more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Salamanders can grow back entire limbs if they lose them. A team at University College London lead by Dr Max Yun are looking at the genetic pathways that enable these amphibians to regenerate their arms and legs. This could help us understand how human healing can be improved, as Victoria Gill explains to Chris Smith... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The latest digital imaging techniques are literally throwing new light on the ingenious variety of materials that have been used over the centuries to create artists' paint pigments. A new exhibition at the National Gallery in London is looking at the history of colour making over time. Jane Reck has been finding out how preparations were given a helping hand with a state-of the art positioning easel that provides the ability to examine great works of art in unprecedented detail. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Six months after some of the worst flooding witnessed in Britain, Professor David Dermeritt from Kings College London explains to Graihagh Jackson how these deluges have changed Britain's policies on how we manage rivers, risks and rising water levels. What is the future of flooding? Will climate change worsen it? And how will the government protect property? Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This week, 3000 metres up a Chilean mountain, scientists pressed the button to blow up half a million tonnes of rock. The mountain's called Cerro Armazones and the reason it was being blown up was to create the site for what will become the world's biggest most powerful optical telescope. With typical scientific understatement its known as the European Extremely Large Telescope or EELT. Isobel Hook an astrophysicist from Oxford University told Chris more about the project. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Bacteria that can degrade the woody material in plant waste and turn it into an oil-free material for plastics manufacture have been developed by scientists at Warwick University in Britain. Professor Tim Bugg told Chris more... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

There's a new theory this week claiming that men's faces evolved to take punches. It comes from researchers at the University of Utah and goes against a previous theory that craniofacial evolution was driven by a diet of nuts, seeds and vegetables.The Utah team think that extra-thick bones and muscles in the jaw and brow helped to protect our ancestor's faces when they got into punch ups, presumably while fighting over women.But although it's a neat story, and a different way of looking at the evolution of skulls, there are some problems with the idea, as Kat Arney found out from Julie... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists