Naked Science News

Fertile conversation - scientists have found that fertile females sound different

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:16:12 +0100

In a study published in Evolution and Human Behaviour, Gordon Gallup and Nathan Pipitone from the State University of New York at Albany describe how they recorded women counting up to ten on four dif...

Bats out of hell: it's official, bats are louder than a Meatloaf concert

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:11:38 +0100

Scientists studying the sounds produced by bats has shown that they are amongst the loudest creatures on earth, pumping out 140 dB. Thankfully, because it's in the ultrasound range, we can't hear it,...

Is this the basis of Bird Navigation?

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:08:20 +0100

Scientists have shown how birds might be able to see the Earth's magnetic field, helping them to navigate. A team from Oxford University and Arizona State University, writing in this week's Natu...

Plant Aids in HIV Battle

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:04:43 +0100

Scientists have discovered how to make large amounts of a plant chemical which has potent anti-HIV effects. Stanford researcher Paul Wender and his colleagues, writing in this week's Science, describ...

Bad news for the Colossal squid's home

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:01:16 +0100

While we are still discovering such exciting things about illusive deep-sea creatures, there is also some worrying news this week about the state of the oceans that these creatures live in.Scientists ...

A colossal catch

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:31:43 +0100

Scientists this week have been unravelling some of the mysteries of the deep, with a specimen of the Colossal Squid that has been taken out of the freezer and slowly thawed at the Museum of New Zealan...

Is it one of your favourite things?

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:41:10 +0100

If raindrops on roses are some of your favourite things, then here is some news for you. A study has come out this week that reveals why it is that drops of water cling to rose petals in that most bea...

Cornflakes for boys

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:37:25 +0100

We know that many reptiles like crocodiles can choose the sex of their offspring by controlling the temperature their eggs are incubated at. And now it has been revealed that human mothers might also ...

It's on the tip of my tongue - and that's where it'll stay if you're not careful

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:24:50 +0100

The claim that we learn from our mistakes would appear to be wrong, according to a new study from Canada.McMaster University researchers Karin Humphreys and Amy Warriner, writing in the Quarterly Jour...

Best tool to find explosives? Mine's a mongoose!

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:21:09 +0100

Engineers in Sri Lanka have come up with a cheap but effective way to locate landmines - a mongoose tethered to a robot! Landmines are a serious problem. The United Nations estimates that there...

The web sees evolution on the fly

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:31:14 +0100

A US developer has come up with a way for webpages to evolve how they look to make them more user-friendly. Matthew Hockenberry, from Boston-based Creative Synthesis, has developed a system that wat...

Testosterone beefs up market bubbles

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:18:39 +0100

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that the performance of financial traders is linked to their hormones. Joe Herbert and John Coates followed 17 city traders in London over a...

Atom-Thick Transistors

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:11:22 +0100

Scientists have made the world's thinnest ever transistors - the devices that switch current on and off in all electronic equipment. At their very smallest, the new transistors are just one atom...

Vitamin death-link hard pill to swallow

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:03:58 +0100

Vitamin supplements might make you die sooner, say researchers. Goran Bjelakovic and his colleagues, from the University of Copenhagen, looked at the results from 230,000 people who had taken part in...

Could seismic events shake up clouds?

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:23:07 +0100

Scientists in China are investigating the possibility that seismic events might trigger the creation of strange cloud formations. Writing in the International Journal of Remote Sensing, Chinese scie...

My song - new computer programme offers automatic accompaniment

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:08:33 +0100

A new computer programme developed by Microsoft and unveiled at the Human Computer Interaction Conference this week offers budding solo artists the supporting band they've always craved - even if they...

Bend it like Beckham: Researchers solve the mystery of why "easy" balls are so hard to catch

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:59:52 +0100

Crowds at cricket and baseball games often stare increduously as fielders fumble what was, at first glance, a dead easy catch. The ball was chipped straight up in the air off the bat and it shou...

To B-SE sure

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:43:55 +0100

Canadian Scientists have developed a filter system that can clean blood of the prion protein that causes variant CJD (mad cow disease or BSE), potentially making blood donations much safer. Since a p...

Evolution seen on a laboratory bench

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:38:57 +0100

In an experiment that might help to silence the critics of evolution, scientists in California have made genes evolve on a laboratory bench. Writing in this week's PLoS Biology, Brian Paegel and Gera...

Pesticide blasting bacteria

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:11:32 +0100

Researchers this week have revealed a new way of using bacteria to help mop up harmful chemicals in the environment like pesticides. Using microorganisms to help clean up the environment, so called b...

Deep sea treasure in the Thames

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:06:26 +0100

How could I resist talking about a story that hit the headlines this week - the discovery that there are seahorses living in the busy waters of the Thames Estuary in London. Over the past 18 months, ...

Superinsulators

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:05:20 +0100

We have known about superconductors for about a hundred years. Superconductors are materials in which, if you cool them down far enough, their electrons form quantum objects called Cooper pairs, and t...

Temperature sensitive paint

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:43:06 +0100

Many deaths each year are caused cars slipping on ice. A lot of the problem is that it is hard to know when there is ice on the roads, so drivers can't take this into account in how they drive....

How plants avoid the shade

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:05:46 +0100

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the US have fathomed the molecular secrets of how plants stretch and grow their way into the sunshine. Plants can differentiate between the ...

Ivy makes nanoparticles

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:09:06 +0100

Ivy plants secrete nanoparticles that help them to climb walls, scientists have discovered. The evergreen plants cling onto surfaces using tiny rootlets that spring out from their stems which ar...

Feed a cold, for definite

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:37:29 +0100

Scientists have come up with strong immunological evidence for why you should always feed a cold. Writing in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, Lynn Martin and her colleagues found that dieting d...

Researchers take long look at shortsightedness

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:33:13 +0100

Your birthday could affect your risk of shortsightedness, a study in Israel has found. Writing in the journal Opthalmology, Jossi Mandel studied the medical records of nearly 300,000 military personn...

Bacteria eat antibiotics

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:29:06 +0100

Scientists in the US have discovered large numbers of soil-dwelling bacteria that are not only resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics, they also eat them! The findings have exposed a large, pre...

Satellites spot cholera

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:25:38 +0100

Cholera kills thousands of people every year. It's a diarrhoeal illness caused by a bacterium, Vibrio cholerae, which is carried harmlessly in the intestines and on the surfaces of copepods - sm...

Oscars predictable as ever; in fact moreso...

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:45:06 +0100

Anyone who fancies a punt on the winners of next year's Oscars may be able to boost the success of their predictions with the help of statistics. US-based researchers Iain Pardoe and Dean Simonton stu...

Bad memories lost to the ether

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:38:48 +0100

A new study has shown that a whiff of anaesthetic might be able to wipe away bad memories and even prevent post-traumatic stress disorder.Writing in PNAS, UC Irvine scientists Larry Cahill and Michael...

Primate Gamble Pays Off

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:32:47 +0100

In a study which might help to explain why humans sometimes make rash decisions that don't pay off, scientists have uncovered the evolutionary origin of why some animals are partial to a flutter.Human...

Cloned tissue cure Parkinson's Mice

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:27:02 +0100

Scientists have used cloning technology to cure mice with the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, using their own cells.Writing in Nature Medicine, Sloan-Kettering Institute researcher Viviane Tabar and ...

Rule Learning Rats

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:10:59 +0100

It seems that rats are even smarter than we thought - they can learn a set of abstract rules and apply them to completely new situations - something we thought previously only humans, other primates a...

Sharp Beaks Stick to Soft Squid

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:55:29 +0100

Could you carve a roast dinner using a knife that had no handle? Well this is almost what a squid has to do every time it uses its beak. Scientists at the University of California at Santa...

Robo-treatment for blindness

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:49:23 +0000

Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine have mad a discovery that could lead to treatments for two of the leading causes of blindness - age-related macular degeneration and diabetic r...

Making a positive impact

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:43:39 +0000

Many people assume that meteors hitting our planet can only spell disaster for living creatures. For example, we've all heard about the massive meteor strike 65 million years ago that is widely believ...

He may drink tea, but that doesn't make him common

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:31:48 +0000

Seeing Chimpanzees on TV and in adverts could be misleading the public into thinking chimps are thriving, when the reality is very different. For 45 years, chimps could be seen advertising tea, and m...

Stopping Spoiled Food at the Checkout

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:25:26 +0000

Have you ever bought milk, only to discover it's gone off by the time you get home? A new device could stop spoiled food ever leaving the supermarket! If food is not properly refrigerated, the ...

Bug Spray acts as Chemical Cloak

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:17:09 +0000

DEET, one of the world's most popular topical insect repellents, actually works by hiding your natural smell. If you travel to a malarial country, you're strongly advised to cover up and use insect r...

Memories Survive Metamorphosis

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:43:42 +0000

Despite dramatic changes in every aspect of their biology, it seems that moths and butterflies can remember things they learned as caterpillars.Caterpillars can be thought of as eating machines - as t...

Water-Guzzlers

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:39:49 +0000

Running vehicles on alternatives to fossil fuels could stress scarce water resources, US scientists have warned. Michael Webber and Carey King, from the University of Texas at Austin, suggest that pow...

The Smell of the Reef

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:38:07 +0000

Phytoplankton and algae living on coral reefs release a chemical which attracts fish from miles around, and could play a key role in reef ecology.Ecosystems are all about balance, and the phytoplankto...

Mysterious Forces

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:53:30 +0000

For the last 10 years physicists have been puzzled by a mysterious force acting on space probes. There have been various slight anomalies detected in how spacecraft move which don't seem to be moving ...

Sing a song of sewage

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:59:31 +0000

Scientists have found that birds exposed to oestrogens in the environment sing better but have weaker immune systems. Katherine Buchanan and her colleagues at Cardiff University treated groups of mal...

Indonesia Gives World Bird Flu

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:53:23 +0000

In the last week Indonesia agreed to provide the WHO with samples from the latest human cases of bird flu caused by the H5N1 viral strain. This move ends a stand-off between the Indonesian government ...

Vanishing forests spell bad news for sea turtles

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:20:48 +0000

This week there is rather discomforting news of an unexpected link between environmental problems on land and those in the sea - it seems that cutting down rainforests in West Africa is damaging not o...

Sharks and shoppers have something in common

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:17:17 +0000

With such a huge blue ocean to wander around, how exactly do marine predators like sharks find their next meal? Well, it turns out that instead of randomly swimming about, sharks and other marine hun...

Bat Nav 2

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:11:43 +0000

Scientists have have found that a bar magnet is the basis of bats' direction-finding prowess. University of Leeds researcher Richard Holland and his colleagues exposed big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscu...

Let your mind wander

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:02:05 +0000

Scientists have used brain scans to uncover what happens in the minds of jazz and other improv players when their creative juices start flowing. Writing in the journal PLoS One, US research duo Allen...