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 because urban trees tend to live fast and die young. She shared her research at one of the "Town Talks" put on by Tel...

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 at good amyloids that could lead science to develop new treatments for disease. She spok...

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, spoke about the groundbreaking work his lab is doing in a "Town Talk" sponsored by Tellurid...

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 out for us; what is quantum computing, how will it help us, what are the promises and pitfal...

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 doctors at the Mayo Clinic, led by surgeon Paul Tang, had drawn on the basic research of his lab and others...

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 by veteran broadcast journalists Judy Muller and George Lewis. Our sponsors are Alpine Bank and t...

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 describe the different ways we can access these carbon sources and convert troublesome greenhous...

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 researchers to observe chemical and biological processes at the atomic level. Dr. Corcelli spoke at one of ...

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 management and she and her colleagues are exploring ways MOFs could be used in detecting and storing r...

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 research is tempered by the fact that he's worried by the current cutbacks in government rese...

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 years studying chromatin using advanced imaging technology and he and his colleagues have made ...

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 effect of restoring your immune system is the reversal of the most reliable indices of gene...

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 that power green transportation. In a "Town Talk" sponsored by Telluride Science, he d...

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. A side benefit, she says, is that once the bacteria have gobbled up all the methane they can hol...

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, helping to construct better models for predicting severe weather, something that could save many lives.&nbs...

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 blocks of life. He spoke at a "town talk" sponsored by Telluride Science. Moderators: award-w...

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 says this would be part of a portfolio of green solutions to man-made climate...

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 the ethical considerations that can guide us to finding the best in this emerging technology while ...

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 amazing things that they will do, literally a “quantum leap” in performance. However, this is not the whole sto...

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. Boppart and his colleagues have been able to identify cancers early and accurately. Moreover, this ...