Big Picture Science for Monday 15 December 2014 - Shocking Ideas

Big Picture Science - Shocking Ideas

Electricity is so 19^th century. Most of the uses for it were established by the 1920s. So there’s nothing innovative left to do, right? That’s not the opinion of the Nobel committee that awarded its 2014 physics prize to scientists who invented the blue LED.

Find out why this LED hue of blue was worthy of our most prestigious science prize … how some bacteria actually breathe rust … and a plan to cure disease by zapping our nervous system with electric pulses.

Guests:

• Siddha Pimputkar – Postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Department of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center under Shuji Nakamura, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Jeff Gralnick – Associate professor of microbiology at the University of Minnesota
• Kevin Tracey – Neurosurgeon and president of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Shocking_Ideas

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for 06/23/14 - What Do You Make Of It?

Big Picture Science - What Do You Make Of It?

You are surrounded by products. Most of them, factory-made. Yet there was a time when building things by hand was commonplace, and if something stopped working, well, you jumped into the garage and fixed it, rather than tossing it into the circular file.

Participants at the Maker Faire are bringing back the age of tinkering, one soldering iron and circuit board at a time. Meet the 12-year old who built a robot to solve his Rubik’s Cube, and learn how to print shoes at home. Yes, “print.”

Plus, the woman who started Science Hack Day … the creation of a beard-slash-cosmic-ray detector … the history of the transistor … and new materials that come with nervous systems: get ready for self-healing concrete.

(Photo is a model of the first transistor built in 1947 at the Bell Telephone Labs in New Jersey that led to a Nobel Prize. Today’s computers contain many million transistors … but they’re a lot smaller than this one, which is about the size of a quarter. Credit: Seth Shostak.)

Guests:

• Lucy Beard – Founder of Feetz
• Mark Miodownik – Materials scientist, director of the Institute of Making, University College, London, and author of Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
• Steve Nelson – Team K.I.S.S. Robotics, maker of Beer2D2
• Dan Lankford – Managing director, Wavepoint Ventures
• Ariel Waldman – Founder, Spacehack.org, global instigator of Science Hack Day
• Saurabh Narain – 12 year-old participant in Maker Faire

Permalink: http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/What_Do_You_Make_Of_It_

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for 01/20/14 - Forget to Remember

Big Picture Science - Forget to Remember

You must not remember this. Indeed, it may be key to having a healthy brain. Our gray matter evolved to forget things; otherwise we’d have the images of every face we saw on the subway rattling around our head all day long. Yet we’re building computers with the capacity to remember everything. Everything! And we might one day hook these devices to our brains.

Find out what’s it’s like – and whether it’s desirable – to live in a world of total recall. Plus, the quest for cognitive computers, and how to shake that catchy – but annoying – jingle that plays in your head over and over and over and …

Guests:

• Ramamoorthy Ramesh – Materials physicist, deputy director of science and technology, Oakridge National Lab
• Michael Anderson – Neuroscientist, Memory Control Lab, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.
• Ira Hyman – Psychologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington
• James McGaugh – Neurobiologist, University of California, Irvine
• Larry Smarr – Professor of computer science, University of California, San Diego; director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2)

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Forget_to_Remember

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for 07/08/13 - Material Whirl

Big Picture Science - Material Whirl

ENCORE What’s the world made of? Here’s a concrete answer: a lot of it is built from a dense, knee-scraping substance that is the most common man-made material. But while concrete may be here to stay, plenty of new materials will come our way in the 21^st century.

Discover the better, faster, stronger (okay, not faster) materials of the future, and Thomas Edison’s ill-conceived plan to turn concrete into furniture.

Plus, printing objects in 3D… the development of artificial skin… and unearthing the scientific contributions of African-American women chemists.

Guests:

• Darren Lipomi – Chemical Engineering post-doc, Stanford University’s “Skin Lab”
• Linda Schadler – Professor of materials science and engineering, and associate dean for academic affairs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
• Nicolas Weidinger – Research assistant at the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California
• Jeannette Elizabeth Brown – Retired research chemist; author of African American Women Chemists
• Robert Courland – Author of Concrete Planet: The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World’s Most Common Man-made Material

This encore podcast was first released on January 30, 2012

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Material_Whirl

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for 10/29/12 - As You Were

Big Picture Science - As You Were

We all want to turn back time. But until we build a time machine, we’ll have to rely on a few creative approaches to capturing things as they were – and preserving them for posterity. One is upping memory storage capacity itself. Discover just how much of the past we can cram into our future archives, and whether going digital has made it all vulnerable to erasure.

Plus – scratch it and tear it – then watch this eerily-smart material revert to its undamaged self. And, what was life like pre-digital technology? We can’t remember, but one writer knows; he’s living life circa 1993 (hint: no cell phone).

Also, using stem cells to save the white rhino and other endangered species. And, the arrow of time itself – could it possibly run backwards in another universe?

Guests:

• Michael S. Malone – Professor of professional writing at Santa Clara University and the author of The Guardian of All Things: The Epic Story of Human Memory
• Oliver Ryder – Director of genetics, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research
• Michael E. Smith – Chemist, Arkema, Inc
• Sean Carroll – Theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, author of The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
• Pico Iyer – Writer, author of The Man Within My Head and the New York Times article, “The Joy of Quiet”

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/As_You_Were

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for 01/30/12 - Material Whirl

Big Picture Science - Material Whirl

What’s the world made of? Here’s a concrete answer: a lot of it is built from a dense, knee-scraping substance that is the most common man-made material. But while concrete may be here to stay,
plenty of new materials will come our way in the 21^st century.

Discover the better, faster, stronger (okay, not faster) materials of the future, and Thomas Edison’s ill-conceived plan to turn concrete into furniture.

Plus, printing objects in 3D… the development of artificial skin… and unearthing the scientific contributions of African-American women chemists.

Guests:

• Darren Lipomi – Chemical Engineering post-doc, Stanford University’s “Skin Lab”
• Linda Schadler – Professor of materials science and engineering, and associate dean for academic affairs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
• Nicolas Weidinger – Research assistant at the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California
• Jeannette Elizabeth Brown – Retired research chemist; author of African American Women Chemists
• Robert Courland – Author of Concrete Planet: The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World’s Most Common Man-made Material

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Material_Whirl

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.

Are We Alone for 06/13/11 - No Expiration Date

Are We Alone - No Expiration Date

We all have to go sometime, and that final hour is the mother of all deadlines. But scientists are working to file an extension. Discover how far we can push the human expiration date.

Plus, the animal with the shortest lifespan and the chemistry that causes your pot-roast to eventually clothe itself in fuzzy green mold.

Also, a clock that won’t stop ticking (for 10,000 years) and our love-hate relationship with that long-lived hydrocarbon that keeps our snack cakes fresh: plastic!

Guests:

• Martin Bucknavage- Senior Food Safety Extension Associate, Department of Food Science at Penn State
• Leonard Guarente – Biologist, Laboratory for the Science of Aging, M.I.T.
• Alexander Rose – Executive Director and Clock Project Manager, Long Now Foundation
• Rick Hochberg – Biologist, University of Massachusetts – Lowell
• Susan Freinkel – Author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/No_Expiration_Date

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.

NOTICE: "The Names They are a-Changin’" - Coming in July, "Are We Alone" will change to "Big Picture Science!"