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This is the show where we bring science.

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Discovery is,

advances, research, technology, unbelievable.

Without further ado, this is the naked scientist.

Hello, welcome to the show that brings you the latest breakthroughs in science,

technology, and medicine, with me Chris Smith, and in the program this week, a breakthrough in treating spinal cord injuries,

worrying news about red fire ants in Sicily, we'll look at what that means for the rest of us and NASA are sending a sample of an asteroid

back to Earth. It arrives this weekend and we'll hear what scientists are hoping to learn.

chemical signals that can guide growing nerves disconnected by a spinal injury back towards

their correct targets have been used by scientists in Switzerland to make paralyzed mice

walk again. Around the world, about half a million people are paralyzed by spinal injuries every year, and unlike injuries to nerve

elsewhere in the body, spinal cord and brain nerve cells don't spontaneously regenerate to bridge the injury.

Part of the reason for that is that a dense scar forms at the injury site and that can prevent

nerves from growing through it.

But also these regenerating nerves might not know where to grow too in order to reconnect and repair the damaged neurological wiring.

But now, EPFL researcher Jordan Square and his colleagues have discovered how to bridge that

scar tissue and how to switch on a signaling molecule that acts a bit like a homing beacon to

...