Springer Nature Limited Podcasts

Designing a nutritious and planet-friendly diet, and an AI that guides mathematicians. In this episode: 00:46 Designing a healthy diet for the planet Researchers are trying to develop diets that help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time providing nutrition. Some of these sustainable diets are now being tested to see if they wor…

A host of private companies are promising commercial fusion reactors in the next decade. After decades of promise, it finally seems that nuclear fusion is approaching commercial viability. Companies around the world are securing huge amounts of funding, and advances in materials research and computing are enabling technologies other than the standa…

In a quickly developing story a new variant, first detected in Botswana, is triggering rapid action among researchers. The variant - currently named B.1.1.529 has more than 30 changes to the spike protein - and the concern is that these mutations may result in increased transmissibility, severity of disease or even antibody evasion. In this episode…

The Nature salary and satisfaction survey reveals researchers' outlook, and NASA’s test of planetary defences. In this episode: 00:45 Salary and satisfaction survey Like all aspects of life, scientific careers have been impacted by the pandemic. To get an insight into how researchers are feeling, Nature has conducted a salary and satisfaction surve…

Caffeine administration has been associated with reduced rates of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) in preterm neonates but the effect of caffeine on renal oxygenation is unknown. In this episode, we meet this month's highlighted Early Career Investigator, Dr. Matthew Harer from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He has been …

Spineless sea squirts shed light on vertebrate evolution, and an iodine-fuelled engine powering a satellite in space. In this episode: 00:45 A story of sea squirts, ancient vertebrates and missing genes When a PhD student set out to study the developmental pathways of a strange sea creature, he hoped to shed light on the origins of vertebrate anima…

Two new anti-viral pills have been shown to be safe and effective against COVID in clinical trials, according to recent press releases. The drugs, molnupiravir, developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, and Paxlovid, developed by Pfizer both appear to significantly reduce hospitalisation in people with early COVID. Some researchers are quie…

The host is joined by Dr. Andres Acosta from the Brigham and Women Hospital. Dr Acosta discusses, on behalf of a distinguished group of coauthors, their recent somewhat provocative modern pathology publication proposing that mesenchymal neoplasms of the prostate are morphologically and molecularly heterogeneous lesion that include neoplasms that ha…

Reassessing 24,000 years of global temperatures, and on the ground at COP26. In this episode: 01:21 Reassessing Earth’s climate over the past 24,000 years The ~20,000 year period from the Last Glacial Maximum to the pre-industrial era saw huge changes to the Earth’s climate. But characterising how temperatures changed during this time has been diff…

Lake Kivu, nestled between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, is a geological anomaly that holds 300 cubic kilometres of dissolved carbon dioxide and 60 cubic kilometres of methane. The lake has the potential to explosively release these gases, which could fill the surrounding valley, potentially killing millions of people. Researcher…

Last weekend, hundreds of young people boarded a specially chartered train in Amsterdam to travel to Glasgow ahead of the United Nations COP26 climate summit. Among them were scientists, activists and policy makers. In a Nature Podcast special, we boarded the train to catch up with some of them - to talk about their science, their motivations and t…

Can we really understand ancient shifts in oceanic currents by looking at the population genetics of migratory species? Find out in this episode, as Dr Jurjan van der Zee (University of Groningen) discusses his search for a warm-water corridor between the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the genomes of green turtles.…

Star-shaped cells called astrocytes are the most abundant cells to be found in the human brain. In the past, they’d been thought to play a supporting role to neurons, such as providing metabolic support, but recently they’re also emerging as stars of information processing. They can respond to neurotransmitters and release neuroactive substances th…

Early on in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the majority of infected children were either asymptomatic or had mild COVID-19 disease, prompting many to demand a higher acceptable risk threshold for pediatric vaccines. More recently, as children begin to make up a larger proportion of the infected population and following evidence of the mental and physical…

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) can be an important tool in breast cancer patients to help stratify individuals into levels of disease risk. The clinical utility of PRS is still being evaluated, but what hasn't yet been evaluated is how to communicate such results to patients, and how they respond to their PRS scores.On this month’s GenePod, Tatiane Ya…

More that 3 billions doses of China's CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines have been administered across the globe, playing an especially important role in Latin America and South East Asia, as well as China. These vaccines use inactivated virus particles to expose the immune system to Sars-CoV-2, but they do not appear to generate the same levels of n…

The unexpected origins of a 4000-year-old people, protecting your ‘digital presence’ and what to expect from COP26. In this episode: 00:48 The origins of the mysterious Tarim mummies For decades there has been debate about the origins of a group of 4000-year-old individuals known as the Tarim Basin mummies. Their distinct appearance and clothing ha…

In this special “Meet the Expert” episode, two distinguished guests from Johns Hopkins University discuss their pioneering approach of applying methodologies, initially developed for astronomy, to the assessment of biomarkers of tumor microenvironment (TME). The guests are Dr. Janis Taube, director of Dermatopathology at Hopkins, and a co-Director …

People that have recovered from COVID are seeing stronger immune responses after vaccination than those that never contracted the virus. Researchers are now racing to unpick what is behind this powerful 'hybrid immunity'. In this episode of Coronapod, we discuss a series of studies which are offering up some possibile explanations, and ask how this…

An ancient solar storm helps pinpoint when Vikings lived in the Americas, and using magnets to deftly move non-magnetic metals. In this episode: 00:53 Pinpointing Viking presence in North America It’s well-understood that Vikings went to North America around a thousand years ago. However, working out a precise date has proven difficult. Now, thanks…

Hundreds of scientists have responded to a survey asking about harassment and abuse during the pandemic. The results paint a picture which is as concerning as it is shocking. In this episode of Coronapod we discuss the kinds of abuse scientists are facing, try to pick apart where it is comes from and ask what can be done about it? News Feature: ‘I …

The neurons behind acupuncture’s effect on inflammation, and how antibiotics affect gut bacteria. In this episode: 00:54 The neuronal basis for acupuncture’s effect on inflammation In mice, electroacupuncture has been shown to reduce inflammation, but only when certain points on the body are stimulated. Why this is has puzzled scientists, but now, …

In this episode, Dr. Ian Cree, Head of The WHO Tumour Classification discusses his team's recent open access publication in Modern Pathology. Historically, mitotic figures counting has been done by expressing the number of mitoses per n high power fields (HPFs), ignoring the fact that microscope fields may differ substantially, even at the same hig…

New data suggests that inexpensive, high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters can effectively scrub SARS-CoV-2 particles from the air in hospital COVID wards. The result validates previous studies carried out in controlled conditions. Currently, HEPA filters are not routinely used in hospital settings, but researchers suggest they could could …

AI weather forecasters, mapping the human brain and the 2021 science Nobel prizes. In this episode: 00:52 Improving the accuracy of weather forecasts with AI Short-term rain predictions are a significant challenge for meteorologists. Now, a team of researchers have come up with an artificial-intelligence based system that weather forecasters prefer…

Nile tilapia are the third most important farmed fish worldwide, but the emergence of the Tilapia Lake Virus (TiLV) threatens its sustainable production. In this episode, Dr Agustin Barría (The Roslin Institute) discusses his recent collaboration, where they used a natural outbreak of TiLV to investigate the genetic architecture of disease resistan…

Researchers are still laying the groundwork in the search for therapeutics that target the mechanism for genetic disorders leading to new treatments. On this month’s GenePod, authors of two recently published articles in Genetics in Medicine discuss where trials for such molecules are succeeding and where there is still more research to be done to …

Starting up in science: behind the scenes In this bonus episode, the four Nature reporters behind Starting up in science discuss how the project came about, what it was like to follow two scientists for three years, and what the series has achieved. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.…

Episode 4 Ali interviews for a critical grant. While she is waiting for the result, the pandemic throws their labs into chaos. Then comes a personal crisis. Read a written version of Starting up in science See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 3 As newly-minted principal investigators, Ali and Dan have grand plans for their research – but science is slow, especially when other demands loom large: hiring staff, mentoring and teaching students and, of course, the race to secure funding. Read a written version of Starting up in science See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out i…