In recent years the STEM educational initiative – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math – has gradually evolved into STEAM, as both educators and employers have gained a greater appreciation for the importance of arts education (the A in STEAM) in an innovation-driven economy. While it has long been held that early exposure to the arts,…

Hear from six Berkeley Lab scientists with big new ideas designed to help transform our carbon-drenched, overheating world. Each has tremendous promise and social value. Energy-Efficient Desalination: Making fresh water from salty sources on the cheap Current desalination techniques require huge amounts of energy and generate large amounts of environmental waste. Berkeley Lab’s Chinmayee Subban,…

New programs from the Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara go behind the scenes with filmmakers, directors, screenwriters and others involved in the film industry. From blockbuster, oscar-nominated films to independent foreign gems, enjoy fascinating stories and insights into the filmmaking process. 7 Islands & a Metro with Director Madhusree Dutta Director Madhusree Dutta and…

Contrary to what you may think – or perhaps remember from school – “O Chem”, or organic chemistry, is really deceptively simple in principle, and The Scripps Research Institute’s Keary Engle takes you on a thorough exploration of how the initial simplicity of “O Chem” can be exploited to great use in drug discovery. From…

How could Buczacz, the European town that was home to Jews, Poles and Ukrainians for hundreds of years, be turned into a community of genocide in the early 1940’s? Using eyewitness reports, documents, and memoirs from that period, historian Omer Bartov answers this question in chilling detail as he describes how the Nazis recruited the…

There are more than 7000 rare disorders affecting more than 30 million Americans. Only half have a known cause. Hudson Freeze, PhD, Professor of Glycobiology & Director of the Human Genetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute examines how we should treat these disorders as well a new ones that will be discovered…

When then-President-elect Trump took a phone call from the leader of Taiwan in December, he threatened to upend the “One China” policy that has been in place since the Nixon administration. That breach of protocol alarmed many, including the authors of a widely circulated new report by China specialists Susan Shirk of UC San Diego…

Demand for gill rakers for use in alternative medicine has put the oceanic manta ray (Manta birostris) population at risk. With their extremely low reproductive rates, large scale and even small artisanal fisheries may lead to population decline and perhaps local extinctions. Understanding the basic ecology and population dynamics of the species is a prerequisite…

“When should your robot rat you out, and when should it not?” asks Albert (“Al”) P. Pisano, Professor and Dean, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Robotics are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our daily lives – from wearable sensors to intelligent vehicles. Many of these innovations will aid in more independent…

In the United States, there are over 37 million injury-related visits to the emergency room every year. One out of three people will suffer a traumatic injury during their lifetime. Providing state-of-the-art trauma care to a community requires coordinated systems of emergency medicine physicians, trauma surgeons and their hospitals and centers. But it is clearly…