Tag: "pbs"

Algae…Soylent Green…and the Future of Biofuel

Algae…Soylent Green…and the Future of Biofuel

Can a renewable plant really replace crude oil? Find out how algae is becoming the fuel of the future — grown like a farm crop.

 
A-Head of the Curve: Interview with Concussion Expert Kevin Guskiewicz

A-Head of the Curve: Interview with Concussion Expert Kevin Guskiewicz

MacArthur "Genius" Kevin Guskiewicz discusses the research he and his team at UNC-Chapel Hill are conducting in the field of sports-related concussions.

 
Flowers to Pharmacy

Flowers to Pharmacy

The nation's first hospital in Philadelphia culled its archives to create a collection of medical and botanical texts from the 18th and early 19th century.

 
Building a Better Hose

Building a Better Hose

Depending on the atoms used and their arrangement, engineers and chemists use polymers to create almost anything from a soft toothbrush bristle to a tough bullet-proof vest.

 
Songbirds as a Measure of Farm Sustainability

Songbirds as a Measure of Farm Sustainability

John Quinn, a researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, explains how he collects and uses bird calls to establish an indicator for farm healthiness known as the Healthy Farm Index.

 
Iron Mining Controversy in Northern Wisconsin

Iron Mining Controversy in Northern Wisconsin

A pristine area in Northern Wisconsin next to Lake Superior, much prized for its clean water and wilderness, is also home to 25 percent of the country’s iron ore reserves, a commercial value of $200 billion.

 
USGS at the Forefront of Saving Bats From White-Nose Syndrome (WNS)

USGS at the Forefront of Saving Bats From White-Nose Syndrome (WNS)

In the winter of 2007, residents of New York State began finding dead bats in their yards. Since then it’s estimated that more than a million bats have died from white-nose syndrome, a fuzzy white fungus that grows on their noses and wings.

 
‘Superfast’ Muscles Help Bats Find Their Dinner

‘Superfast’ Muscles Help Bats Find Their Dinner

As a hunting bat closes in on a flying insect, its echolocation calls get closer and closer together, and shorter and shorter in duration. Scientists recently discovered how their muscles can produce more than 160 calls every second.

 
Yo GAMMA GAMMA:  Photo plates enable astronomers to peer back to the future

Yo GAMMA GAMMA: Photo plates enable astronomers to peer back to the future

Dr. Michael Castelaz, the Science Director at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, knows GAMMA II is a sleeping giant. He just needs a little help waking up the beast.

 
Update on the Salt Creek Tiger Beetles: Q & A with Stephen Spomer

Update on the Salt Creek Tiger Beetles: Q & A with Stephen Spomer

Steve Spomer has been involved in Salt Creek Tiger Beetle research for more than two decades. Spomer is now working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a capture and recovery program to save the species.

 
Scientists Work to Measure, Understand Jersey Jellyfish Explosion

Scientists Work to Measure, Understand Jersey Jellyfish Explosion

New Jersey scientists study proliferating populations of sea nettles, which have made some waters un-swimmable.

 
NOVA “Fabric of the Cosmos” with Brian Green 11/2 Live Webcast

NOVA “Fabric of the Cosmos” with Brian Green 11/2 Live Webcast

Today at 6PM PST, The World Science Festival, Columbia University and NOVA are hosting a screening of 'What is Space?' to coincide with the 'NOVA: Fabric of the Cosmos' series premiere. Also included will be Saul Perlmutter, local Lawrence Berkeley Lab astrophysicist and winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

 
Invasive Species on the Move: the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins

Invasive Species on the Move: the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Basins

Rivers and streams have created pathways along the dividing line between the Great Lakes basin and the Mississippi River basin. These portals could allow water and aquatic nuisance species to move from one basin into the other, endangering the health of both water systems.

 
Tales from the Ghost Forests

Tales from the Ghost Forests

When a megathrust earthquake strikes, scientists around the world know in seconds. But what about hundreds of years ago? How, exactly, do scientists know there was a megathrust quake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone on January 26, 1700 between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.? The answer lies in a ghost forest discovered on the Washington coast that reveals the secrets of one of the most powerful earthquakes to hit the planet.

 
Up, Up and Away: Escaping a Tsunami Vertically

Up, Up and Away: Escaping a Tsunami Vertically

Northwest disaster officials and communities propose new structures for people to get to safety when a killer tsunami wave is on the way, not by trying to outrun the wave, but by trying to out-climb it.

 
Dawn: Mission to Explore Strange New Worlds

Dawn: Mission to Explore Strange New Worlds

We are soon to explore a new world, one that we haven't seen up close before: the asteroid Vesta. What will we find, and why are we even interested in what amounts to a mega-mountain of rock hurtling through space?

 
Bat Flight a Mechanical Marvel

Bat Flight a Mechanical Marvel

Watch stunning videos of bats in mid flight that are helping Brown University scientists understand how these mammals fly.

 
Earth to ET: I'm Not Listening!

Earth to ET: I'm Not Listening!

SETI's Allen Telescope Array is placed in hibernation due to funding cuts, putting the search for extraterrestrial intelligence on hold.

 
Producer's Notes: Science on the SPOT – Falcons Up Close

Producer's Notes: Science on the SPOT – Falcons Up Close

QUEST's web-only video series, Science on the SPOT, takes a close-up look at the Peregrine Falcon.

 
15 Months Later, Rediscovered San Francisco Plant Thrives

15 Months Later, Rediscovered San Francisco Plant Thrives

Fifteen months after a native plant thought to be extinct was rediscovered in San Francisco, local botanists have succeeded in growing it and are making plans to plant it out in the wild.