Science Sundays

Gamma-ray bursts, discovered by accident with classified satellites, were for decades a leading mystery in astrophysics. John M. Horack explores the breakthroughs that followed from the Gamma Ray Observatory (1991) and subsequent experiments, which showed that these are the most powerful explosions in the universe. Very recently, gravitational waves have been detected from these still-mysterious explosions.

While the digital revolution has changed the way libraries serve their users, it’s also enabled new modes of research and creativity. Kate Zwaard will explore how libraries and archives are presenting their collections so artists, researchers and the curious can interact with them in new ways.

Food insecurity is on the rise, affecting the nutrition and mental health of around 821 million people. Drawing on research from Nicaragua, Barbara Piperata will explore the underlying causes of the issue and how to inform policies aimed at alleviating food insecurity and improving mental health both locally and globally.

Science and medicine are at an exciting crossroads. Recent developments in the clinical laboratory are being implemented in research hospitals and will soon be used to diagnose diseases across the U.S. In this talk, Amanda Hummon will illustrate some of the recent breakthroughs in molecular imaging technologies and how they are being used to help cancer patients.

In this lecture, physicist Nandini Trivedi will explain why a piece of metal can superconduct, that is allow electricity to flow without any resistance; why superconductors make the strongest magnets; how superconducting qubits are driving the revolution for quantum computers; and, most importantly, describe open questions in quantum matter.

In this lecture, Karen G. Lloyd will introduce the vast and diverse microbial ecosystem that was recently discovered buried deep within Earth’s crust, illuminating how these microbes perform important ecosystem functions in volcanoes, hot springs and deep subsurface oceanic sediments.

Every decade, politicians update voting districts to account for population shifts as measured by the U.S. Census. Of course, partisan politicians are inclined to draw maps that favor their own party, resulting in partisan gerrymandering. In this episode, Dustin G. Mixon will explore how tools from mathematics can help to deter this growing threat to democracy.

The human hearing organ is exceptional in its ability to sense sound across a wide range of frequencies and intensities. The process of sound conversion into brain electrical signals that we can understand is called "mechanosensation" and is carried out by various proteins essential to hearing. In this lecture, Marcos Sotomayor will explore and present in simple terms the structures and function of these proteins.

Educational neuroscience draws upon cognitive neuroscience, education and psychology with the goal of examining neurobiological processes related to education. This presentation by Laurie Cutting will provide an overview of this emerging field and the insights it can offer, using reading development as an exemplar and examining how neurobiological approaches inform and refine our understanding of how to identify and treat reading difficulties.

The story of Earth is a 4.5-billion-year saga of dramatic transformations driven by physical, chemical and biological processes. The co-evolution of life and rocks unfolded in an irreversible sequence of evolutionary stages. Each stage re-sculpted our planet’s surface; introduced new planetary processes and phenomena; and inexorably paved the way for the next.