The Hello, Hello and this week a new solar-powered retinal implant to restore sight to the

blind is it safe to drink alcohol in pregnancy and also under the microscope the world of fungi from how they enable plants to

exchange nutrients with each other to how they can poison you and even produce

compostable packaging materials. And if you would like to get in touch with us here at the Naked Scientists, you can email us,

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First though let's kick off with a look at what's been making scientific headlines this week,

and I've got a story out of Stamford in the US.

Yossi Mandel and his colleagues have invented a new implant for the retina which is self-powering and can replace the

photoreceptors, the cells that convert effectively light into sight.

Now how this works is that it's intended that you put this device into eyes which have been

damaged by diseases like retinitis pigmentosa. This is a common condition where just the photoreceptors, the rods or cones, are lost and

the rest of the retina stays relatively healthy. So the idea is that you could create a device

that would work a bit like those rods and cones

and convert light into electrical signals that you could then input into the

surviving retina and it would then transmit those signals into the brain.

And in this paper in Nature Communications this week,

what they have done is to come up with this very clever array

of photovoltaics.

It's a bit like a miniature solar cell for the eye.

They take these tiny photovoltaic cells which are responsive to light in the near

infrared regime. In other words it's just beyond the red so we can't see it.

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