Science Straight Up
In conjunction with Telluride Science, "Science Straight Up" delves into how science impacts our everyday lives. Your hosts, veteran broadcast journalists Judy Muller and George Lewis talk to leading scientists and engineers from around the world.
Episodes
43 episodes
"Trees in the City: Cooling, Carbon and the Complications"
Dr. Lucy Hutyra admits she's "a total tree-hugger." She's the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, and a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. She and her BU colleagues study the impact of trees on urban environmen...
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Season 6
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Episode 10
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29:09
"Shape up Those Proteins--The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Amyloids"--Dr. Ann McDermott, Columbia University
Proteins are the building blocks of life. Our bodies make about 25-thousand of them. Dr Ann McDermott, a biophysicist from Columbia University, studies the shapes of perteins as they clump into structures called amyloids. Sometimes ...
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Season 6
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Episode 9
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27:30
"What if the Future of Computing Isn't Silicon?"--Dr. Milan Delor, Columbia University
The revolution in artificial intelligence is sucking up a lot of electrical power, something that's growing at an alarming rate. Science may have a solution in a new generation of highly efficient computer chips that use materials other t...
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Season 6
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Episode 8
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24:17
Quantum Computing and Chemistry--Dr. Kade Head-Marsden, Univ. of Minnesota
Quantum computing promises to supercharge scientific research with its ability to solve multiple problems all at once. It could lead to more rapid development of drugs and materials to improve the way we live. But first, there are some serious ...
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Season 6
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Episode 7
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20:33
A heartwarming Tale: How Basic Research into Cell Behavior Spurred an Advance in Transplant Surgery
Scientists, intensly focused on their own areas of research, don't usually stray out of their own lanes. So, Dr. Rohit Pappu, of Washington University in St. Louis, whose field is cellular and molecular biophysics and bioengineering, was surpri...
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Season 6
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Episode 6
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23:36
DNA Origami: Folding DNA into Tiny Shapes--Dr Guillermo Acuña, University of Fribourg
A revolution in fabricating DNA into useful objects is underway and Dr. Guillermo Acuña of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland is right in the middle of it. In a talk sponsored by Telluride Science, he laid out a world of possibilities; t...
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Season 6
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Episode 5
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22:59
The Good, The Bad, and The Possible: Generating Products from Above-Ground Carbon
Dr. Josh Schaidle is the Laboratory Program Manager for Carbon Management at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. According to Schaidle, there are all sorts of untapped opportunities in above-ground carbon, found...
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Season 6
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Episode 4
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25:59
Animating the Invisible: Molecular Movies and the Science They Reveal--Dr. Steve Corcelli, University of Notre Dame
Movies tell stories – whether it’s a gritty historical drama or a teen vampire romance – there are few better ways to absorb content than by watching events unfold on the silver screen (or in the comfort of your home). Similarly, Steve Corcelli...
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Season 6
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Episode 3
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22:45
Life in Color: From Photochromic Crocs to the Future of Electronics
Dr. Natalia Shustova’s lab at the University of South Carolina works with metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, molecules of metal ions and organic links. MOFs can be engineered with specific properties for a wide variety of applications – from bu...
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Season 6
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Episode 2
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25:21
Mining Plastic: Changing the Narrative From Waste to Resource
Amid growing piles of plastic waste in our landfills and in our oceans, Dr. Michael McGuirk of the Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is working on new methods to recycle plastics and turn them into use...
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Season 6
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Episode 1
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32:24
Chromatin: Your DNA in a Package
The double helix structure of DNA discovered in 1953 explained the basic mechanism for how our genetic information can be inherited through replication. But, we've since found that those genes have on/off switches. Understanding how our g...
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Season 5
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Episode 9
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24:28
Can we opt out of Aging?
Mankind has long searched for the fountain of youth. Recent studies indicate that both immunological and global aging processes can be reversed in humans now using repurposed medicines that are known to be safe. The key is the thymus, the...
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Season 5
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Episode 8
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26:18
Clean Energy's Reliance on Dirty Magnets: The Source and a Solution--Dr. Peter Ladwig, Niron Magnetics
As climate change worsens, the need for a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources gets more urgent. But clean energy often has its own environmental costs. The risks posed by nuclear reactors and mining lithium for batteries ...
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Season 5
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Episode 7
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22:15
Methane: Supercharging Nature's Solution to Reverse Climate Change
Methane is a greenhouse gas that's 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. And unvortunately, methane concentrations in our atmosphere are rapidly increasing. Yet, methane may also offer a potential climate solution. With a much shorter half-...
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Season 5
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Episode 6
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21:44
Storm Chasing From Space--Dr. Susan van den Heever, Colorado State University
Life on Earth is fundamentally impacted by thunderstorms, from the life-sustaining fresh water they supply, to the life-threatening severe weather they produce. T In spite of the critical role of thunderstorms in our weather and climate system,...
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Season 5
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Episode 5
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27:00
Quantum Simulations of the Origins of Life: Life-Giving Molecules From Planetary Impacts--Dr. Nir Goldman, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
Before there was life on Earth, there was something called "the period of maximum bombardment" when comets, meteors and other space objects crashed into the planet. Some of those carried materials necessary for life to emerge. Dr. N...
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Season 5
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Episode 4
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22:00
Inspired by Nature: The Chemistry That Powers our Planet--Dr. Jenny Yang, UC Irvine
Our planet has always been powered by sunlight. Plants use light and water and air to grow through the process of photosynthesis. Dr. Jenny Yang, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine proposes that we imitat...
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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24:24
The Ethics of Emerging Technology: The Era of Artificial Intelligence--Dr. Teresa Head-Gordon
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are relatively new, powerful, and disruptive technologies that are rapidly entering practice in our daily lives and shaping our future in areas ranging from employment, health, politics, an...
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Season 5
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Episode 2
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22:49
"Beam me up, Scotty:" Demystifying the Quantum World
Our fifth season of "Science Straight Up" kicks off with Dr. Michael Wasielewski of Northwestern University talking about the basics of quantum theory and how it will change our lives. We can't beam people aboard the starship just yet, bu...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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19:01
The True Colors of Cancer--shining a new light on disease--Dr. Stephen Boppart
Cancer biopsies are scary. The patient gets tissue removed from his or her body, the sample gets sent off to the lab and then there's the agonizing wait for the results. Dr. Stephen Boppart of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, ...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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25:03
RNA Therapeutics: Recoding Drug Design, One Gene at a Time--Dr. Athma Pai
Our experience with mRNA vaccines during the COVID pandemic showed us the possibility of designing other RNA-based drugs in a flexible and efficient manner. Dr. Athma Pai of the UMass Chan Medical School talks about how her research int...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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24:35
Where do you Want to Live? innovation, Data and Building the Cities of the Future
Dr. Amy Mueller and her team are measuring the vital signs of cities, gathering data that will inform future additions and improvements to our urban areas. How do we build cities in a sensible, sustainable way? Key to this work is getting commu...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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24:38
Quantum Dots 101: How to Make a Lightbulb That is a Million Times Smaller Than an Ant
Quantum Dots are marvelous little crystalline structures that work as electrical semiconductors and emit light. But that's not all they do. Dr. Jennifer Hollingsworth of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at the Los Alamos N...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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23:15
Can the Soil Save Us? The Dirt on Local Agricultural Climate Solutions
American agriculture contributes about 10 percent of this country's greenhouse gas emissions, but done right, it can absorb rather than produce carbon and help overcome the problem of man-made climate change. This exciting possibility is ...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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20:20
Solving Big Problems with Small Things: tiny programmable sponges
Dr. Omar Farha of Northwestern University and NuMat Technologies talks about Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOF's) that he prefers to call "programmable sponges." Hailed as a potential defining material of the 21st century, these nano-sized structur...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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18:05