Science Online

Check out the amazing collection of local podcasts and videos.

Online Videos

KQED QUEST is a weekly half-hour high-definition multimedia series that shines a light on scientific discoveries, goes behind the scenes on research expeditions, and explores ongoing issues of technological, biological, and environmental significance all with a local focus featuring Bay Area locations, experts, and organizations. QUEST Television airs every Wednesday at 7:30pm on KQED 9. Every episode can also be found online at www.kqed.org/quest. This is one of the best science shows out there, so I encourage everyone to check it out.

Plug-In Hybrid Cars

A group of Bay Area engineers is trying to launch a green car revolution at 100 mpg by souping up Toyota’s Prius. The holy grail of their “plug-in hybrids:” less smog, less global warming and a cure for America’s oil addiction.

  • The Science of Riding a Bicycle
    Their basic design hasn’t changed much, but scientists still don’t fully understand the forces that allow humans to balance atop a bicycle. QUEST visits Davis – a city that loves its bicycles – to take a ride on a research bike and explore a collection of antique bicycles.
  • Your Videos on QUEST: Kip Evans
    Kip Evans is a natural history documentary filmmaker and photographer from Pacific Grove, California. This is an excerpt of his short film, "Isla Holbox: Whale Shark Island."
  • Field Notes: Oakland Zoo in Uganda
    In this "Field Notes" segment, Amy Gotliffe, director of conservation at the Oakland Zoo, shares her photographs and stories from Uganda, where the zoo's Bodongo Snare Removal Project works to protect endangered chimpanzees from illegal poaching.
  • Exploring Corals of the Deep
    Off California's coastline, thousands of feet below the deep blue ocean where the sun's rays don't reach, teems a diverse community of deep sea corals. Armed with unmanned submarines equipped with robotic arms, sensors and HD cameras, scientists are exploring this treasure trove of corals and the rich marine life living among them.
  • Childhood Obesity: Kids Fight Back
    One in six kids in the United States is obese, a condition that doubles their risk of heart disease. Lorena Ramos, 14, a patient at the Healthy Hearts clinic at Children's Hospital Oakland struggles to lose weight. Will she succeed?
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Science Today originated as one of the first television programs on science in the 1950’s and it was produced right here at the California Academy of Sciences! Now, Science Today encompasses media screens on the museum floor, a website and podcasts, guest lecture programs and our Thursday night science mixers. We gather and disseminate content through our partners, local programs, other media and Academy staff. The goal is to increase public interest in and understanding of contemporary and everyday science issues leading to greater scientific awareness and literacy.Check out all of their videos videos Cal Academy website. Jupiter’s new spot An amateur astronomer discovers a new, mysterious spot on Jupiter.

Jupiter’s New Spot from Science Today on Vimeo.

Sponsored by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the Friends of Science is a forum for individuals who share the desire to enhance knowledge and understanding of science and technology. We are educators, students, community members, laboratory employees, and anyone else with a curiosity about the natural world and our understanding of it. More info can be found at http://www.lbl.gov/friendsofscience/.

Physics 101: What Our Next President Needs to Know Rich Muller, author of Physics for Future Presidents, argues that the next president can’t afford to be ignorant about the science behind terrorism, nuclear dangers, energy, space, and global warming. Muller, a MacArthur Fellow, Berkeley Lab physicist, and one of the most popular lecturers at UC Berkeley, discusses what it takes to survive in today’s increasingly dangerous world — information essential to the next commander-in-chief. He presented his talk Oct. 13, 2008.

Buildings That Think Green Buildings are the SUVs of U.S. energy consumption, gobbling up 71 percent of the nation’s electricity. In this Sept. 22, 2008 talk, Arun Majumdar, Director of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, discusses how scientists are creating a new generation of net-zero energy, carbon-neutral buildings.

The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.

SETI maintains a Youtube channel with videos featuring lectures and education on some of SETI’s project, including the Allen Telescope Array.

The Weather on Mars

  • Iapetus, Phoebe and Hyperion - Cristina Dalle Ore (SETI Talks)
    Iapetus, Phoebe and Hyperion - Cristina Dalle Ore (SETI Talks) SETI Talks Archive: seti.org Iapetus is historically the most intriguing satellite of Saturn because of its color dichotomy. A major advance in the understanding of the origin of the dichotomy has come recently from two fundamental pieces of information. The first was the discovery by Verbiscer et al. (2009) of a ring of dark material that originates in the Phoebe's neighborhood and spirals down to Iapetus collecting on its leading side. The second fundamental piece of information comes from thermal modeling of Iapetus' surface. This has demonstrated that the darkening of the leading side results in a temperature rise of a few degrees on that hemisphere of Iapetus. Consequently, the higher temperature causes the H2O ice to sublimate and effectively migrate to cooler regions of the surface making them brighter and colder. A variation in the color of the dark material in different regions of the surface of Iapetus has also been reported, suggesting differing properties possibly related to the nature and origin of the material. Dr. Dalle Ore used a statistical tool to explore a mosaic of 30 spectral image cubes of a portion of the surface of Iapetus observed in 2007 with the Cassini Visible-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). She has identified the spectroscopic signature of the dark materials and she will compare it to the spectra of dark materials detected on the surface of other satellites in the Saturn system to trace their theoretically predicted origin. From: setiinstitute Views: 284 11 ratings Time: 01:02:27 More in Science & Technology
  • No new video this week
    No new video this week Due to technical difficulties there will be no new video this week. In the meantime, please feel free to check out our extensive back-catalog! From: setiinstitute Views: 81 2 ratings Time: 00:09 More in Science & Technology
  • Smart Coatings for Manned Spacecraft - Steve McDaniel (SETI Talks)
    Smart Coatings for Manned Spacecraft - Steve McDaniel (SETI Talks) SETI Talks Archive: seti.org As we enter the era of manned space flight and habitation beyond low Earth orbit, much longer duration human occupation and much less frequent resupply will be the norm, stretching the capacities and capabilities of life support systems. The myriad internal surfaces aboard ISS and the various crew compartments on drawing boards today are viewed as a liability due to contamination and fouling. Yet, if such surfaces operate synergistically with life support systems, these same surfaces become an asset with practically no increased load weight penalty. Virtually all of these surfaces are coated. Bio-based, non-toxic additives to such coatings, many of which are already being marketed for 1XG applications, will create the functionalized surfaces needed. From: setiinstitute Views: 591 15 ratings Time: 01:07:02 More in Science & Technology
  • Advances in Hybrid Rockets - Brian Cantwell (SETI Talks)
    Advances in Hybrid Rockets - Brian Cantwell (SETI Talks) SETI Talks archive: seti.org The hybrid rocket concept has been around for more than seventy-five years. The idea is to store the oxidizer as a liquid and the fuel as a solid producing a design that is immune to large-scale chemical explosion. The fuel is contained within the combustion chamber in the form of a cylinder with one or more channels called ports hollowed out along its axis. Combustion takes place between vaporized oxidizer flowing through the ports and fuel evaporating from the solid surface. While the hybrid rocket enjoys many safety and environmental advantages over conventional systems, large hybrid rockets have not been commercially viable. The reason is that traditional systems use polymeric fuels that evaporate too slowly making it difficult to produce the high thrust needed for most applications. To compensate, the surface area for burning must be increased, and as the size of a hybrid rocket increases the number of required ports also increases leading to poor volumetric loading and poor fuel structural characteristics. Recent research at Stanford University has led to the development of a class of paraffin-based fuels that burn at surface regression rates that are several times that of conventional polymeric fuels. These new fuels form a thin, hydro-dynamically unstable liquid layer on the melting surface of the fuel grain. Entrainment of droplets from the liquid-gas interface can substantially increase the rate of fuel mass transfer leading to much ... From: setiinstitute Views: 673 12 ratings Time: 01:09:20 More in Science & Technology
  • Dynamics of Dusty Rings - Daniel Jontof-Hutter (SETI Talks)
    Dynamics of Dusty Rings - Daniel Jontof-Hutter (SETI Talks) SETI Talks Archive: seti.org The optically thin, dusty ring systems around the outer planets are formed and replenished by impact debris from large ring particles or satellites. As dust grains pick up electric charges from interactions with the plasma environment and sunlight, the motions of grains ranging from micron-scale down to ions, are determined by gravity and electromagnetism. Following launch at the local Kepler orbital speed, positively-charged dust grains for which EM and gravity are roughly comparable, are immediately unstable to either escape at high speed or collide with the planet in the equatorial plane. Negatively-charged grains remain radially stable. Some positive and negative grains are unstable to vertical perturbations, which cause dust grains to spiral up magnetic field lines to collide with the planet at high latitude. The boundaries between stable and unstable orbits depend only on the charge-to-mass ratio of a dust grain and its radial launch position. For the idealized configuration of a rotating planetary magnetic field aligned and centered with the rotation axis of the planet, a reasonable approximation at Jupiter, but especially applicable at Saturn, we conduct numerical simulations to locate these boundaries, and derive analytical expressions to explain these data, improving upon prior models to provide a complete description of the azimuthal, radial and vertical motions of highly-charged dust grains. We then test the robustness of our ... From: setiinstitute Views: 456 6 ratings Time: 57:41 More in Science & Technology
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Explo.tv webcasts many of the Exploratorium’s excellent program. With well over 600 programs, you can always find something interesting to watch.

Check out all of Explo.tv’s videos on their website.

Here is a list of recent webcasts:

  • Golden Gate Bridge Dynamics (Clip)
    Admit it: Hasn't the Godzilla inside you always wanted to grab the Golden Gate Bridge and shake it silly? Finally, you can. In honor of the iconic span's 75th birthday, Exploratorium exhibit developer Dave Fleming presents a dynamic model of the Golden Gate Bridge. What happens to the bridge during an earthquake? How about strong winds and heavy traffic? The model dances and wiggles realistically, displaying the same vibrational modes and motions that occur in the actual bridge.
  • The Tibetan View of the Mind with Venerable Geshe Lhakdor (Clip)
    Discover the Tibetan Buddhist view of the mind with Geshe Lhakdor. He discusses how awareness and sensory information (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) are perceived through different forms of consciousness, and how Buddhist practitioners investigate their inner mental experiences to better understand their experience of the world around them.
  • This is Your Brain on Meditation with Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas (Clip)
    In this special lecture given at After Dark, Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas relates scientific studies of contemplative practices. Dr. Simon-Thomas is Science Director for the Greater Goods Science Center at UC Berkeley. Her current research examines the conceptual nature, experiential properties, and biological underpinnings of positive states like compassion, as well as the potential for cultivating these states and related acts of altruism.
  • In Conversation with E.O. WIlson (Clip)
    Edward O. Wilson has revolutionized science and inspired the public more often than any other living biologist. Now he is blending his pioneer work on ants with a new perspective on human development to propose a radical reframing of how evolution works. Dr. Wilson visited the Exploratorium recently and spoke to staff and a group of invited students.
  • Meet the Makers-Trash (Webcast)
    Open Make is a monthly program at the Exploratorium, in collaboration with Make Magazine and Pixar Animation Studios, to highlight the tools, techniques, and ingenuity of local makers. As part of this program, makers from the Bay Area will be highlighted to share their work with the public, and Dale Dougherty, founder and editor of Make Magazine will interview Featured Makers in the McBean theater. Join us for live webcasts of the interviews to see what these makers are up to!
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Podcasts

KQED QUEST is a weekly half-hour high-definition multimedia series that shines a light on scientific discoveries, goes behind the scenes on research expeditions, and explores ongoing issues of technological, biological, and environmental significance all with a local focus featuring Bay Area locations, experts, and organizations. QUEST Radio airs Mondays at 6:30 and 8:30 AM. Every episode can also be found online at www.kqed.org/quest.
The Silicon Valley Lecture Series features some of the world’s leading researchers in astronomy and planetary science presenting the latest news from their fields in a non-technical manner geared for the general public. Each year, NASA Ames Research Center, the Foothill College Astronomy Program, the SETI Institute, and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific partner in sponsoring six Wednesday evening lectures from October through May. Topics in the series have ranged from the exploration of the planets to the speeding up of the expanding universe; from planets around other stars to black holes at the centers of distant galaxies.
  • Multiple Universes and Cosmic Inflation: The Quest to Understand Our Universe (and Find Others)
    Our improving understanding of the cosmos points to an early epoch during which the universe expanded at a stupendous rate to create the vast amount of space we can observe. Cosmologist are now coming to believe that this "cosmic inflation" may do much more: in many versions, inflation goes on forever, generating not just our observable universe but also infinitely many such regions with similar or different properties, together forming a staggeringly complex and vast "multiverse". Dr. Anthony Aguirre (University of California at Santa Cruz) traces the genesis of this idea, explores some of its implications, and discusses how scientists are seeking ways to test this idea. Recorded May 18, 2011.
  • Our Explosive Sun: New Views of the Nearest Star and the Largest Explosions in the Solar System
    Recent satellite missions are giving scientists dramatic new views of the Sun and the huge magnetic explosions in its outer layers that cause flares and the ejections of huge masses of superheated gas. Dr. Thomas Berger of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab takes us on a beautiful tour through our Sun's atmosphere with images and movies from these missions. Recorded April 20, 2011.
  • Saturn's Moon Titan: A World with Rivers, Lakes, and Possibly Even Life
    Titan, Saturn's largest satellite, is the only moon with a thick atmosphere. In many ways, Titan is a cold twin of the Earth, with liquid methane playing the same role there as water plays on our planet. Life on Earth is based on liquid water; could there be life on Titan based on liquid methane? Dr. Chris McKay from the NASA Ames Research Center (co-investigator on the Huygens probe that landed on Titan) discuss the new picture we have of this alien world, with its lakes, its rivers, and its rocks made of water ice. Recorded March 9, 2011.
  • How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming
    Dr. Michael Brown of Caltech shares the inside story of how he discovered "other Pluto's" out there beyond Neptune, including Eris, which is now known to be about the same size as Pluto. He named that new world for the goddess of discord, because, as he describes with his characteristic humor, its discovery resulted in a private and public controversy that led to a redefinition of what a planet is. Recorded January 19, 2011.
  • Catching Shadows: Kepler's Search for New Worlds
    NASA's Kepler spacecraft, launched in March 2009, is a mission designed to survey a slice of the Milky Way Galaxy to identify planets orbiting other stars. Kepler has the advantage that it can find planets as small as Earth in or near the habitable zone of each star. Dr. Natalie Batalha (San Jose State University) introduces the quest for planets elsewhere, describes the techniques used by the Kepler team, and shares some of the mission discoveries to date. Recorded November 17, 2010.
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TWIS is the kickass science and technology radio show that delivers an irreverent look at the week in science and technology. The show airs every Monday at 8:00PM PST on twit.tv

  • 10 May, 2012 – This Week in Science
    Supernovas Differentiate, Indoor Sex Work, Pond Skaters And Warehouse Pirate Bugs, Mistakes Were Made, Kids Health, Scanning Brains, Mayan Calendar Find, The Vagina Microbiomes, And Much More...
  • 03 May, 2012 – This Week in Science
    Clathrate Carbon Prison, Insect Glands, Pigeon Compass, The Staring Point, Stem Cell Suicide, Shelterin The Telomeres, Sedimentary Time travel, Art Faces, And Much More...
  • 26 April, 2012 – This Week in Science
    Supernovas Spawn Life, Unexpected Reservoir, Meerkat Losers Win, Bee Like Brains, The G-Spot, Treating Autism, Mad Cow Cure, World Robot Domination, Belief Vs. Analytics, And Much More...
  • 19 April, 2012 – This Week in Science
    Evolving XNA, Moving A Hand, Blair's Animal Corner, No Bird Magnets, Cooler Heads Prevail, Predicting Your Future, Livers Need Love, DIY Drugstores, Remembering Lines, And Much More...
  • 12 April, 2012 – This Week in Science
    Fit Frogs, A Gene For Niceness, The Neurotic IQ, Animal Sex, Patented Plants, Tracking Toxo, Social Immunity, And Much More...
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Discover what makes life tick and where it might be headed. Are We Alone explores the nature, history, and future of life on this planet… and life’s possible existence on other worlds.

Each themed program connects ideas in surprising and humorous ways to illuminate the origins, the organization, the behavior, and the future of life on Earth. It links this research to the hunt for life elsewhere. Are We Alone is a one-hour science program produced at the SETI Institute’s radio studio in Mountain View, California. AWA broadcasts and podcasts every week.

  • That's So Random!
    ENCORE Random is as random does… makes sense doesn’t even that anyway in tune hear to randomness how lives rules. Brain chaos the drives, restoration role of help insight ecology may into randomness the, numbers sense of make statistics can’t why we or, ants not seem of erratic behavior why the may but is. Guests: Leonard Mlodinow – Theoretical physicist and author of The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Vintage) Jon Chase – Biologist and director of the Tyson Research center at Washington University in St. Louis Lori Marino – Evolutionary biologist, Emory University Deborah Gordon – Biologist, Stanford University John Beggs – Physicist, Indiana University at Bloomington First released January 10, 2011
  • Skeptic Check: Forget with the Program
    Just remember this: memory is like Swiss cheese. Even our recollection of dramatic events that seem to sear their images directly onto our brain turn out to be riddled with errors. Discover the reliability of these emotional “flashbulb” memories. Also, a judge questions the utility of eyewitness testimony in court. And, don’t blame Google for destroying your powers of recall! Socrates thought the same thing about the written word. Plus, Brains on Vacation! Guests: Phil Plait – Keeper of Discover Magazine’s badastronomy blog Craig Stark – Neurobiologist, Director for the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at Univeristy of California, Irvine Ronald Reinstein – Former judge on the Superior Court of Arizona and judicial consultant for the Arizona Supreme Court Betsy Sparrow – Psychologist, Columbia University Descripción en español
  • Group Think
    If two is company and three a crowd, what’s the ideal number to write a play or invent a new operating system? Some say you need groups to be creative. Others disagree: breakthroughs come only in solitude. Hear both sides, and find out why you always have company even when alone: meet the “parliament of selves” that drive your brain’s decision-making. Plus, how ideas of societies lead them to thrive or fall, and why educated conservatives have lost trust in science. Guests: Susan Cain – Author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking Keith Sawyer – Psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration David Eagleman – Neuroscientist, Baylor College of Medicine and author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain Gordon Gauchat – Sociologist, University North Carolina, Chapel Hill Joseph Tainter – Professor, Environment & Society Department, Utah State University and author of The Collapse of Complex Societies Descripción en español
  • Early Adapters
    ENCORE The times are a’changing – rising temperatures, growing population, and new technology coming at us faster than a greased cheetah. So how will humans respond? Find out about future farming in the city – your vegetables might be grown in downtown, hi-rise greenhouses. Also, a population expert tells us how our planet can cope with billions more people, and the man who invented the term ‘cyberspace’ describes what the future might hold for the techno-savvy. Darwinian evolution takes a long time to accommodate to new environments. But Homo sapiens can beat that rap by wielding the right technology – and becoming early adapters. Guests: Dickson Despommier – Emeritus professor of public health and microbiology at Columbia University, author of The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century William Gibson – Author, most recently, of Zero History Joel Cohen – Mathematician and biologist at Rockefeller University David DeGusta – Paleoanthropologist at the Paleoanthropology Institute in California Descripción en español First aired December 6, 2010
  • Humans Need Not Apply
    ENCORE You are one-of-a-kind, unique, indispensible… oh, wait, never mind! It seems that computer over there can do what you do … faster and with greater accuracy. Yes, it’s silicon vs. carbon as intelligent, interactive machines out-perform humans in tasks beyond data-crunching. We’re not only building our successors, we’re developing emotional relationships with them. Find out why humans are hard-wired to be attached to androids. Also, the handful of areas where humans still rule… as pilots, doctors and journalists. Scratch that! Journalism is automated too – tune in for a news story written solely by a machine. Guests: Clifford Nass – Social psychologist at Stanford University and Director of the Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab Tom Jones – United States astronaut, space consultant, and veteran of four Space Shuttle flights Chris Ford – Business director at Pixar Animation Studios Eric Van De Graaff -Cardiologist at Alegent Health James Bennighof – Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and professor of music theory at Baylor University in Texas Kathy Abbott – Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor for Flight Deck Human Factors at the Federal Aviation Administration Kristian Hammond – Co-founder, Narrative Science Descripción en español First aired November 22, 2010.
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