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.

Science Sundays

John M. Horack - Gamma Ray Bursts: A Brief History of the Most Powerful Explosions in the Universe

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.

Kate Zwaard - Collections as Data: Combining Data Science and the Power of Library Collections to Unlock New Understanding

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.

Barbara Piperata - Food insecurity and Mental Health: An Underexplored Global Health Concern

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.

Amanda Hummon - Diagnosing Cancer with Molecular Imaging

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.

Nandini Trivedi - Superconductivity: From the Quantum Dance of Electrons to Levitated Trains and Quantum Computers

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.

Karen Lloyd - The Strange Microbes Deep Inside Earth and What They Do

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.

Dustin Mixon - The Mathematics of Partisan Gerrymandering

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.

Marcos Sotomayor - The Molecular Machinery of Hearing

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.

Laurie Cutting - Educational Neuroscience: How the Brain Supports Learning in Children and Adolescents

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.

Robert Hazen - The Story of Earth: How Life and Rocks Have Co-Evolved

Contemporary humanity enjoys mobility levels that are unprecedented in history. While this has benefits, it also has enormous social, health and environmental costs. Resolving these costs is crucial if civilization is to survive the 21st century — a world that will see 10 billion people, most of whom will crowd into cities. This lecture will describe the concept of sustainable transportation and how new, data-driven science allows scholars and practitioners to address these essential issues.

Harvey J. Miller - Mobility Matters: Why Sustainable Transportation is Essential for our Future

Quantum mechanics — the fundamental theory that describes nature at the smallest scales of atomic and subatomic energy levels — seems to be everywhere, from superhero movies to Fortune 500 companies. But what makes quantum mechanics so different and special? How can it be used (and can objects really pass through barriers)? This talk will bridge the divide between popular imaginations of quantum and real quantum mechanical devices, covering the basics of quantum mechanics and how it creates both limits and promise for computer processing.

Nadya Mason - Going Through the Quantum Tunnel

What are the social interactions and responses that explain the stunning behavior of flocking birds, schooling fish and swarming honeybees? How do performance instructions shape a collaborative improvisation when dancers make compositional choices on the fly? How should we design decision-making for a team of robots to perform environmental monitoring and search and rescue? In this episode, Naomi Leonard presents a unifying framework to explore these and related questions on the dynamics of groups.

Naomi Leonard - Flock Logic: The Art and Engineering of How Groups Move

Mitochondria — the so-called “powerhouse of the cell” — hold a special place in eukaryotic (nucleus-containing) cells. Evidence accumulated over the past half century strongly points to an origin of the mitochondrion from a free-living bacterium closely related to a specific group, the Alphaproteobacteria. However, the actual processes by which this endosymbiotic bacterium was integrated into its host cell remain controversial. So, what do we really know?

Michael W. Gray - What Do We Really Know About the Origin of the Cell's Powerhouse?

Over billions of years, nature has developed materials, objects and processes that function from the macroscale to the nanoscale. Many organisms and objects — including bacteria; plants; animals; and seashells — possess properties of commercial interest. The emerging field of biomimetics allows scientists to mimic biology or nature to develop eco-friendly nanomaterials, nanodevices and systems with desirable properties. This talk will present an overview of the field of biomimetics and biologically inspired surfaces.

Bharat Bhushan - Lessons from Nature: Bio-inspired Surfaces for Green Science and Technology

Science Sundays is a free lecture series open to the public that provides a wide range of current and emerging topics and issues in science that touch our everyday lives. Speakers are experts in their fields from on campus and around the world with experience in making their topics interesting and accessible for audiences of all ages, with or without a science background.

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Science Sundays

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