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

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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 of GPS technologies.

Research Article: Roslund et al.

News and Views: Robust optical clocks promise stable timing in a portable package

09:34 Research Highlights

Evidence of ritual burning of the remains of a Maya royal family, and the first solid detection of an astrophysical tau-neutrino.

Research Highlight: Burnt remains of Maya royalty mark a dramatic power shift

Research Highlight: Detectors deep in South Pole ice pin down elusive tau neutrino

11:52 How marsupial gliding membranes evolved

Several marsupial species have evolved a membrane called a patagium that allows them to glide gracefully from tree to tree. Experiments show that mutations in areas of DNA around the gene Emx2 were key to the evolution of this ability, which has appeared independently in multiple marsupial species.

Research article: Moreno et al.

News and Views: Marsupial genomes reveal how a skin membrane for gliding evolved

19:22 Briefing Chat

How overtraining AIs can help them discover novel solutions, and researchers manage to make one-atom thick sheets of ‘goldene’.

Quanta Magazine: How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data?

Nature news: Meet ‘goldene’: this gilded cousin of graphene is also one atom thick

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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 Have We Really Thought This Through? Kelly and Zach Weinersmith Particular Books (2023)

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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 by an as-yet unseen moon.

Research Article: Faherty et al.

10:44 Research Highlights

The discovery that bitter taste receptors may date back 450 million years, and the first planet outside the Solar System to boast a rainbow-like phenomenon called a ‘glory’.

Research Highlight: Bitter taste receptors are even older than scientists thought

Research Highlight: An exoplanet is wrapped in glory

13:07 How working memory works

Working memory is a fundamental process that allows us to temporarily store important information, such as the name of a person we’ve just met. However distractions can easily interrupt this process, leading to these memories vanishing. By looking at the brain activity of people doing working-memory tasks, a team have now confirmed that working memory requires two brain regions: one to hold a memory as long as you focus on it; and another to control its maintenance by helping you to not get distracted.

Research article: Daume et al.

News and Views: Coupled neural activity controls working memory in humans

22:31 Briefing Chat

The bleaching event hitting coral around the world, and the first evidence of a nitrogen-fixing eukaryote.

New York Times: The Widest-Ever Global Coral Crisis Will Hit Within Weeks, Scientists Say

Nature News: Scientists discover first algae that can fix nitrogen — thanks to a tiny cell structure

Nature video: AI and robotics demystify the workings of a fly's wing

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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 a key driver for deforestation.

Research Article: Engert et al.

10:44 Research Highlights

How climate change fuelled a record-breaking hailstorm in Spain, and an unusual technique helps researchers detect a tiny starquake.

Research Highlight: Baseball-sized hail in Spain began with a heatwave at sea

Research Highlight: Smallest known starquakes are detected with a subtle shift of colour

13:02 Briefing Chat

A clinical trial to test whether ‘mini livers’ can grow in a person’s lymph node, and the proteins that may determine left-handedness.

Nature News: ‘Mini liver’ will grow in person’s own lymph node in bold new trial

Nature News: Right- or left-handed? Protein in embryo cells might help decide

Nature video: How would a starfish wear trousers? Science has an answer

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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 that tracked the lives and health of children born half a century ago.

This is an audio version of our Feature Why are so many young people getting cancer? What the data say

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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 mate to enter the nest first. Use of these sorts of gestures, more complex than simply pointing at an object of interest, were thought to be limited to great apes, suggesting that there are more non-vocal forms of communication to be found in the animal kingdom.

Scientific American: Wild Birds Gesture ‘After You’ to Insist Their Mate Go First

13:34 The carbon cost of home-grown veg

Research have estimated that the carbon footprint of home-grown food and community gardens is six-times greater than conventional, commercial farms. This finding surprised the authors — keen home-growers themselves — who emphasize that their findings can be used to help make urban efforts (which have worthwhile social benefits) more carbon-efficient.

BBC Future: The complex climate truth about home-grown tomatoes

20:29 A look at next week's total eclipse

On 8th April, a total eclipse of the Sun is due to trace a path across North America. We look at the experiments taking place and what scientists are hoping to learn.

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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 they hope will help uncover ways to better preserve our memories, especially in the face of neurodegenerative disorders.

Research Article: Jovasevic et al.

News and Views: Innate immunity in neurons makes memories persist

08:40 Research Highlights

The effect of wind turbines on property values, and how waste wood can be used to 3D print new wooden objects.

Research Highlight: A view of wind turbines drives down home values — but only briefly

Research Highlight: Squeeze, freeze, bake: how to make 3D-printed wood that mimics the real thing

11:14 How melting ice is affecting global timekeeping

Due to variations in the speed of Earth’s rotation, the length of a day is rarely exactly 24 hours. By calculating the strength of the different factors affecting this, a researcher has shown that while Earth’s rotation is overall speeding up, this effect is being tempered by the melting of the polar ice caps. As global time kept by atomic clocks occasionally has to be altered to match Earth’s rotation, human-induced climate change may delay plans to add a negative leap-second to ensure the two align.

Research article: Agnew

News and Views: Melting ice solves leap-second problem — for now

20:04 Briefing Chat

An AI for antibody development, and the plans for the upcoming Simons observatory.

Nature News: ‘A landmark moment’: scientists use AI to design antibodies from scratch

Nature News: ‘Best view ever’: observatory will map Big Bang’s afterglow in new detail

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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 has been tricky. Now researchers have developed a method to create and manipulate skyrmions in a way that is compatible with existing computing technology, allowing them to read and write data at a fraction of the energy cost of conventional systems. The team think this shows that skyrmions could be a viable part of the next generation of computers.

Research Article: Chen et al.

News and Views: Magnetic whirlpools offer improved data storage

07:51 Research Highlights

How robotically-enhanced, live jellyfish could make ocean monitoring cheap and easy, and how collective saliva tests could be a cost-effective way of testing for a serious infant infection.

Research Highlight: These cyborg jellyfish could monitor the changing seas

Research Highlight: Pooling babies’ saliva helps catch grave infection in newborns

10:01 AI identifies X factor hidden within zebra finch songs

Male songbirds often develop elaborate songs to demonstrate their fitness, but many birds only learn a single song and stick with it their entire lives. How female birds judge the fitness between these males has been a long-standing puzzle. Now, using an AI-based system a team has analysed the songs of male zebra finches and shown that some songs have a hidden factor that is imperceptible to humans. Although it’s not clear exactly what this factor is, songs containing it were shown to be harder to learn and more attractive to females. The researchers hope that this AI-based method will allow them to better understand what makes some birdsong more attractive than others.

Research article: Alam et al.

News and Views: Birds convey complex signals in simple songs

20:04 Briefing Chat

How H5N1 avian influenza is threatening penguins on Antarctica, and why farmed snake-meat could be a more environmentally-friendly way to produce protein for food.

Nature News: Bird-flu threat disrupts Antarctic penguin studies

Scientific American: Snake Steak Could Be a Climate-Friendly Source of Protein

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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. They hope that this knowledge will ultimately help in the treatment of congenital heart conditions, often caused by irregular development of the heart.

Research article: Farah et al.

Nature video: Building a heart atlas

08:37 Research Highlights

Residue in ceramic vases suggests that ancient Mesoamerican peoples consumed tobacco as a liquid, and a wireless way to charge quantum batteries.

Research Highlight: Buried vases hint that ancient Americans might have drunk tobacco

Research Highlight: A better way to charge a quantum battery

11:11 The evolution of menopause in toothed whales

Menopause is a rare phenomenon, only known to occur in a few mammalian species. Several of these species are toothed whales, such as killer whales, beluga whales and narwhals. But why menopause evolved multiple times in toothed whales has been a long-standing research question. To answer it, a team examined the life history of whales with and without menopause and how this affected the number of offspring and ‘grandoffpsring’. Their results suggest that menopause allows older females to help younger generations in their families and improve their chances of survival.

Research Article: Ellis et al.

News and Views: Whales make waves in the quest to discover why menopause evolved

18:03 Briefing Chat

How the new generation of anti-obesity drugs could help people with HIV, and the study linking microplastics lodged in a key blood vessel with serious health issues.

Nature News: Blockbuster obesity drug leads to better health in people with HIV

Nature News: Landmark study links microplastics to serious health problems

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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 possibility that this thought-to-be human trait could be widespread amongst animals.

Research article: Bridges et al.

News and Views: Bees and chimpanzees learn from others what they cannot learn alone

16:55 Research Highlights

Why the Krakatau eruption made the skies green, and the dining habits of white dwarf stars.

Research Highlight: Why sunsets were a weird colour after Krakatau blew its top

Research Highlight: This dying star bears a jagged metal scar

19:28 The fish that collectively, electrically sense

Many ocean-dwelling animals sense their environment using electric pulses, which can help them hunt and avoid predators. Now research shows that the tiny elephantnose fish can increase the range of this sense by combining its pulses with those of other elephantnose fish. This allows them to discriminate and determine the location of different objects at a much greater distance than a single fish is able to. This is the first time a collective electric sense has been seen in animals, which could provide an ‘early-warning system', allowing a group to avoid predators from a greater distance.

Research Article: Pedraja and Sawtell

27:54 Briefing Chat

The organoids made from cells derived from amniotic fluid, and the debate over the heaviest animal.

Nature News: Organoids grown from amniotic fluid could shed light on rare diseases

The New York Times: Researchers Dispute Claim That Ancient Whale Was Heaviest Animal Ever

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