The sound of an aeroplane can mean many things: mild annoyance; the excitement of travel; a rough night’s sleep. But increasingly, researchers around the world think it may also have some more sinister effects. In this episode of Audiofile, find out just what plane noise could mean for the health of those who have to hear it.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

This week: sequencing the genomes of Darwin’s finches, financial trading nears light speed, an ancient book of optics, and mitochondrial transplants get the UK yes vote.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

This week: a new way to protect plants in drought prone areas, studying the driving force behind plate tectonics, an octopus-inspired robot that can zoom through water and Obama’s budget wishlist seeks a big boost for science.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

This week: an Israeli skull piece could be from a human hybrid, a rethink on what makes sodium explode in water, protecting Libyan archaeology and the hunt for Philae hangs in the balance.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

This week: the restorative power of young blood, improving the safety of genetically modified organisms, the rise of deforestation for gold mining in South America, what meteorites found on earth could teach us about the early solar system, and the reappearance of the Beagle 2.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

Most drug doses for newborns are based on studies done in adults or older children. In this podcast, Brian Smith outlines the problems with this method, and suggests ways to test drugs in this vulnerable population.

www.nature.com/pr/index.html

Bat ecologists have made it their life’s work to find out, philosophers argue we may never understand, and one blind woman knows better than anyone. In the first episode of Audiofile, Nature’s new sound science series, find out how much we can really know about what it’s like to be a bat, and what it tell us about the limits of human perception.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

This week: what hibernation could tell us about brain degeneration, managing climate-induced resettlement, a closer look at expansion microscopy, monkeys and mirrors - and introducing our newest journal, Nature Plants.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

This week: a look at what the New Year may hold for science, the reopening of the Large Hadron Collider, a new antibiotic that’s hard to resist, how less activity has given us lighter bones – and why aren’t there any green mammals?

www.nature.com/nature/index.html

This week: reef fish adopt chemical camouflage, the stories that mattered in science this year, we attempt a game of audio charades, and physicists argue that cosmology must insist upon experimental proof of its theories.

www.nature.com/nature/index.html