Nature Podcast

By the end of 2024 up to two billion people will have gone to the polls, in a pivotal year of elections around the globe. This is giving political scientists the chance to dive into each election in detail but also to compare the differing voting systems involved.They hope understanding the advantages and drawbacks of the systems will help highlight whether some are more likely to promote democratic resilience or to stave off corrosive partisanship.This is an audio version of our Feature: Which is the fairest electoral system? Mega-election year sparks debate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

00:48 The hidden cities of UzbekistanResearchers have uncovered the scale of two ancient cities buried high in the mountains of Uzbekistan. The cities were thought to be there, but their extent was unknown, so the team used drone-mounted LiDAR equipment to reveal what was hidden beneath the ground. The survey surprised researchers by showing one of the cities was six times bigger than expected. The two cities, called Tashbulak and Tugunbulak, were nestled in the heart of Central Asia’s medieval Silk Road, suggesting that highland areas played an important role in trade of the era.Research Article: Frachetti et al.Video: Uncovering a lost mountain metropolis09:32 Research HighlightsHow children's’ movements resemble water vapour, and why coastal waters may be a lot dirtier than we thought.Research Highlight: Kids in the classroom flow like water vapourResearch Highlight: Sewage lurks in coastal waters — often unnoticed by widely used test12:06 Watermarking AI-generated textA team at Google Deepmind has demonst

In this episode:00:46 An unusual γ-ray producing microquasarA type of binary-system known as a microquasar has been found to be firing out γ-rays at high energy-levels, which may make it a candidate to be a long-theorized natural particle-accelerator known as a PeVatron. These objects are thought to be a source of galactic cosmic rays, the origins of which are currently a mystery.Understanding how this microquasar works could also help researchers learn more about full-sized quasars — monstrous objects centred around supermassive black holes, which are too distant to study easily.Research Article: Alfaro et al.News and Views: High-altitude particle detector spots a second Galactic microquasar09:27 Research HighlightsThe comb jellies caught fusing their bodies, and an ancient burial site reveals that Classical accounts of Scythian culture appear to be true.Research Highlight: Two comb jellies fuse their bodies and then act as oneResearch Highlight: Evidence of dead people posed on dead horses found in ancient

00:55 Graphene TongueResearchers have developed a graphene ‘tongue’ that uses AI to tell the subtle differences between drinks. Graphene has long been sought after as a chemical sensor, but tiny variations between devices have meant that it couldn’t be used very reliably. The team behind the ‘tongue’ got around this problem by training an AI to tell the difference between similar liquids regardless of variations between graphene devices. They hope that their work shows that it’s possible to use ‘imperfect’ chemical sensors to get accurate readings and that the ‘tongue’ will be able to help detect problems with food.Research Article: Pannone et al.09:22 Research HighlightsA 3D-printed optical microscope that can image biological samples with ultrahigh resolution, and how newly-hatched sea turtles dig their way up to the beach.Research Highlight: A ‘Swiss army knife’ microscope that doesn’t break the bankResearch Highlight: Baby sea turtles ‘swim’ up from buried nests to the open air11:32 How migrating salmon m

00:46 Physicists spot new types of high-energy radiation in thunderstormsPhysicists 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 occur more frequently than expected, and that previously undetected γ-ray types exist, including flickering flashes that share characteristics of the other two types of radiation.The researchers hope that understanding more about these mysterious phenomena could help explain what initiates lightning, which often follows these γ-ray events.Research Article: Østgaard et al. Research Article: Marisaldi et al. Nature: Mysterious form of high-energy radiation spotted in thunderstorms10:00 Research HighlightsAncient arrowheads re

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 aeroplane engine design, and more.This is an audio version of our Feature: A day in the life of the world’s fastest supercomputer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode:00:46 Unravelling why children with Down’s syndrome are at a higher risk of leukaemiaChildren 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 stem-cells — one of the main places blood is produced in a growing fetus — this extra copy results in changes in how DNA is packaged in a nucleus, opening up areas that are prone to mutation, including those known to be important in leukaemia development.The researchers hope their work will be an important step in understanding and reducing this risk in children with Down’s syndrome.Research Article: Marderstein et al. News and Views: Childhood leukaemia in Down’s syndrome primed by blood-cell bias11:47 Research Highligh

In this episode:00:45 The biggest black hole jets ever seenAstronomers 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, suggesting there may be more of these monstrous jets yet to be discovered.Research Article: Oei et al. 09:44 Research HighlightsThe knitted fabrics designed to protect wearers from mosquito bites, and the role that islands play in fostering language diversity.Research Highlight: Plagued by mosquitoes? Try some bite-blocking fabricsResearch Highlight: Islands are rich with languages spoken nowhere else12:26 A sustainable, one-step method for alloy productionMaking metal alloys is typically a multi-step process that creates huge

In this episode:00:45 What ancient DNA has revealed about Rapa Nui’s pastAncient 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 evidence of a sudden population crash, substantiating other research challenging the collapse idea.Research Article: Moreno-Mayar et al.News and Views: Rapa Nui’s population history rewritten using ancient DNANews article: Famed Pacific island’s population 'crash' debunked by ancient DNA17:03 Research HighlightsThe extinct bat-eating fish that bit off more than they could chew, and how manatee dung shapes an Amazonian ecosystem.Research Highlight: Ancient fish dined on bats — or died tryingResearch Highlight: The Amazon’s

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 joined us to discuss how this statistic gained traction, the harm it could cause, and how better to support the work of Indigenous Peoples.Read more in a Comment article from the authors: No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode:00:45 Why a 'nuclear clock' is now within researchers’ reachResearchers 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 more robust and accurate than current systems, and could offer researchers new insights into fundamental forces present within atomic nuclei.Research Article: Zhang et al.News and Views: Countdown to a nuclear clockNature News: ‘Nuclear clock’ breakthrough paves the way for super-precise timekeepingEditorial: Progress on nuclear clocks shows the benefits of escaping from scientific silos10:10 Research HighlightsThe star that got partially shredded by a supermassive black hole, not just once, but twice, and how heatwaves co

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 academia, and the ‘publish or perish’ culture, need to be overturned in order to end this bias.This is an audio version of our Feature: So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode:00:31 Chatbots makes racist judgements on the basis of dialectResearch 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 Americans — compared with text written in Standardized American English. The findings show that such models harbour covert racism, even when they do not display overt racism, and that conventional fixes to try and address biases in these models had no effect on this issue.Research Article: Hoffman et al.News and Views: LLMs produce racist output when prompted in African American EnglishNature News: Chatbot AI makes racist judgements on the basis of dialect07:01 How ancient engineers built a megalithic structureThe 6,000-y

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 needs to consider the health-related issues associated with old age.Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality Venki Ramakrishnan Hodder (2024)Music supplied by Airae/Epidemic Sound/Getty images. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

00:46 Old AIs can’t learn new tricksAn 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 allow deep learning methods to keep learning continually.Research Article: Dohare et al.News and Views: Switching between tasks can cause AI to lose the ability to learn08:55 Research HighlightsTo stop crocodiles eating poisonous toads researchers have been making them sick, and a sacrificed child in ancient Mexico was the progeny of closely related parents.Research Highlight: How to train your crocodileResearch Highlight: DNA of child sacrificed in ancient city reveals surprising parentage11:20 Briefing ChatHow video g

00:48 The mystery of Stonehenge’s Altar StoneStonehenge’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 ancient Britons went much further, perhaps ferrying the Altar Stone hundreds of miles, to place the rock at the centre of Stonehenge.Research Article: Clarke et al.News: Stonehenge’s massive slabs came from as far as Scotland — 800 kilometres away12:12 Research HighlightsHow a parasite could help scientists break through the blood-brain barrier, and the physics of skateboard moves.Research Highlight: Engineered brain parasite ferries useful proteins into neuronsResearch Highlight: How expert skateboarders use physics on the h

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 answered. This podcast explores how Large Language Models could be improved in more languages and the issues that could be caused if they are not.Watch our related video of people trying out ChatGPT in different languages. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

00:48 Plant trait diversity in drylandsA 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 expectation that fewer traits would be displayed, at a certain level of aridity trait diversity doubles. The team behind the new work hope that it can help us better protect biodiversity as the planet warms and areas become drier.Research Article: Gross et al.08:25 Research HighlightsButterflies and moths use static charge to pick up pollen, and quantum physics rules out black holes made of light.Research Highlight: Charged-up butterflies draw pollen through the airResearch Highlight: Black holes made from light? Impossible,

00:45 Increasing the energy efficiency of light-based computersComputer 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, which are cheaper and more efficient to run. Although only a proof of concept, they demonstrate that their system can perform some tasks as well as laser-based computers.Research Article: Dong et al.News and Views: Cheap light sources could make AI more energy efficient10:36 Research HighlightsThe genes that make roses smell so sweet, and how blocking inflammation could reduce heart injury after a stroke.Research Highlight: How the rose got its iconic fragranceResearch Highlight: Strokes can damage the heart — but reini

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 an audio version of our Feature: Hope, despair and CRISPR — the race to save one woman’s life Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.