Naked Scientists Special Editions

Cheers to the Liver!

Loading player...
The Ancient Greeks understood that the liver was one of the most incredible organs humans possess when they wrote the cautionary tale of Zeus' punishment of Prometheus, in which poor Prometheus was tied to a rock where an eagle would eat his liver every day, but overnight it would regenerate and grow back, allowing his punishment to continue day after day. Now, in real life, the liver doesn't regenerate quite that quickly, but it is true that it has the ability to grow back and heal itself remarkably well. Georgia Mills spoke to liver scientist Auinash Kalsotra from the University of Illinois, about how and why the liver has this incredible skill.
20 Dec 2018 English United Kingdom Science

Other recent episodes

Could groundbreaking vaccine help eliminate malaria?

Malaria kills around 600,000 people every year. Nearly three-quarters of those deaths are children under five. For decades, scientists pursued one goal: a vaccine that could prevent the disease. One scientist dedicated his career to this challenge. Sir Adrian Hill of the University of Oxford set out to develop a…
15 Sep 19 min

What does it take to power an autonomous vehicle?

In this special episode, created in partnership with the Royal Institute of Navigation, we hear from Alex Stewart. Alex is a founding engineer at Oxa, a leading autonomous vehicle (AV) technology company in Oxfordshire, England, and he has spent the past twenty years developing advanced autonomous systems. He recently told…
7 Sep 9 min

Gorilla sperm, and subversive gambling machines

This time, macho male gorillas trade stature for sperm count, how gambling machines use sound and light to take the sting out of losing, whether babies are born hard-wired to dance, the way bird eggs are adapted to altitude, and the effect of a fever on the stickiness of malaria-infected…
26 Jul 33 min

Sickle cell defeated malaria and opened up pastures new

Malaria has been killing humans for at least fifteen thousand years, and our DNA still carries the scars. Ninety percent of the world's malaria cases are in Africa. But this isn't just a modern health crisis. It's written into our evolutionary history. New research from the University of Cambridge reveals…
13 Jul 8 min

Malaria in Africa

Africa remains at the centre of the global malaria crisis. The continent accounts for around 95 percent of all malaria cases, placing immense strain on health systems and costing hundreds of thousands of lives each year. In 2023, there were an estimated 249 million cases globally, with the vast majority…
20 May 10 min
All episodes