Science Straight Up

Tau, a protein, normally supports brain cells’ internal structure; Dr. Lukasz Joachimiak, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, is focused on what happens when it does not. His lab uses computational and experimental methods to determine how and why tau gets tangled and forms the toxic aggregates found with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The hope is to come up wi...

How did the atoms in the universe come together to form life? Dr. Daivd Lacy, of the University of Buffalo says that at the heart of this mystery is the conversion of small molecules into the building blocks of life, Metals, such as iorn, cobalt and manganese, play an important part in this process. Dr. Lacy also explores the possibility of life on other planets and we answer a question from a you...

Water is far more than a refreshing drink — its unique molecular properties make life possible. By forming a dynamic network of weak chemical bonds, water acts as both a selective solvent and a kind of molecular lubricant, driving the assembly of cells and keeping the tiny protein machines inside them flexible and in constant motion. Understanding the role water plays in the generation of these vi...

Dr. Derek Posselt is a research scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the participants in this year's science workshops sponsored by Telluride Science. He and his colleagues have been studying ways to modify the weather, using computer modeling and other advanced techniques to pursue an old idea, since humans have been trying to change the weather for over a century....

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 environments, particularly their effects on carbon dioxide levels and heat. While trees can reduce heat and CO2 levels, complications arise becaus...

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 these amyloids stick to one another, forming amyloid plaques that can lead to diseases like Alzheimer's.  But Dr. McDermott and her colleagues are also looking a...

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 than silicon and depend on light, rather than electricity to process data, bringing down power demands.  Dr. Milan Delor, a chemist from Columbia University,...

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 bugs that have to be overcome.  Dr. Kade Head-Marsden, a chemist at the University of Minnesota, who uses quantum computers to study molecules, lays it all...

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 surprised when asked to review a scientific publication about improving heart transplants. But when he began to read the article, he saw that a team of docto...

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; tiny drug delivery devices, nano sensors to detect disease, tiny traps to catch cancer cells. His presentation, in Mountain Village, Colorado, was moderated...

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 in biomass such as plants and trees and also in carbon dioxide emissions from factory smokestacks or in the air. During his presentation, Schaidle plans to...

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's molecular movies welcome viewers into a new world with cutting-edge visualizations that capture the motion of molecules in real time, allowing resea...

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 building construction, clothing, and smartphone materials to pharmaceuticals and energy generation. Part of Dr. Shustova's work centers on nuclear waste...

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 useful products, from new plastics to fuels to polymers that can capture CO2 from the atmosphere and help ease global climate change.  His optimism about his r...

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 genes are turned on and off has been complicated partly due to the compacting of DNA with proteins (the histones) into chromatin.  Dr. Song Tan has spent yea...

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 center of your adaptive immune system, which withers starting at puberty but can be fanned back to life even after the age of 60.  It turns out that a side effe...

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 are well known, but our speaker, Dr. Peter Ladwig, a materials scientist, is working on another aspect of the problem: dirty magnets used in the electric motors...

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-life than CO2, reductions in methane pack a punch. Dr. Jessica Swanson has a plan to use methane-eating bacteria called methanotrophs to do just that. ...

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, we've fallen short in predicting how they'll behave.  But Dr. Susan van den Heever's team and NASA plan to observe these storms from space,...

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. Nir Goldman of Lawrence Livermore has been using computer simulations to investigate the hypothesis that some of these collisions synthesized the building bl...

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 imitate plants to produce fuel through artificial photosynthesis.  That fuel would be carbon neutral because we would be pulling CO2 out ot the air to manufacture it.  She...

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, and what it means to be human. This talk, by Dr. Teresa Head-Gordon of the University of California, Berkeley considers the current status of AI and ML and th...

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, but teleportation of information using quantum techniques is happening right now. Many of us have heard about quantum computers and some of the amaz...

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, both a physician and an engineer, is working on instant biopsies that will produce results in minutes. Using laser light and artificial intelligence, Dr. Bo...

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 into RNA therapeutics and the immense promise it holds for conquering a wide range of diseases, from. cancer to sickle cell anemia, and more.  Veteran broadcast journ...