Nature and Science Podcast

Send us Fan Mail

This episode explores the mystery of a cellular organelle known as the vault and how unlocking the secrets of nano vaults could revolutionize Disease Cures.  Though its structure is well know and its protein composition well established, its function remains a mystery.  Joining us to explain this mystery is its discoverer, Dr. Leonard Rome.

Dr. Leonard H. Rome is a cell biologist, biochemist and part-time dean involved in research, teaching and administration at the University of California, Los Angeles. He earned his undergraduate degree (B.S. in Chemistry) and graduate degrees (M.S. and Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked on lysosome biogenesis.

Dr. Rome has been on the faculty of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA since he joined the Department of Biological Chemistry in 1979. He became a full Professor in 1988 and has been Senior Associate Dean for Research in the School of Medicine since 1997. Since 2005 he has been the Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute. Dr. Rome has served as the elected Chair of the School of Medicine Faculty Executive Committee and he is actively involved in Graduate and Medical Education. In 1991 he received a UCLA School of Medicine Award for Excellence in Education.

If you would like to learn more about vaults check out Dr. Rome's youtube channel or go to our website:

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

This episode is all about deep fakes.  It is getting more difficult everyday to tell what is real and what is fake, especially on social media and even on TV networks.  In this episode we will explore, the war thats raging between creation and detection of deep fakes.  So what exactly is a deep fake.  Joining us to answer that question is Dr. Ilke Demir.  She’s on the front lines of this battle.

Dr. Demir is a curious research scientist, working on topics in 3D vision, computational geometry, generative models, remote sensing, and deep learning. She earned my Ph.D.  from Department of Computer Science at Purdue University, working under supervision of Daniel Aliaga. She later joined Facebook as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist to work with Ramesh Raskar. After some groundbreaking projects, she left to pursue a startup path, which ended with an acquisition. That next led her to find her research heaven in the world's largest volumetric capture stage at Intel Studios.

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

On this episode we speak with Dr. Zafra Lerman about how a love for science is fostering world peace.

Zafra Lerman is an American chemist, educator, and humanitarian. She is the President of the Malta Conferences Foundation, which aims to promote peace by bringing together scientists from otherwise hostile countries to discuss science and foster international scientific and technical collaboration. 

From 1986 to 2010, she chaired the American Chemical Society's Subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights. She has been successful in preventing executions, releasing prisoners of conscience from jail and bringing dissidents to freedom. 

She is the recipient of many awards for education and science diplomacy, including the 1999 Presidential Award from U.S. President Clinton, the 2005 Nyholm Prize for Education from the Royal Society of Chemistry (England), the 2015 Science Diplomacy Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the 2016 Andrei Sakharov Award for human rights from the American Physical Society (APS), the 2016 United Nations NOVUS Award for the 16th Sustainable Development Goal: Peace and Justice, and the 2017 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award.

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

On this episode we speak with Dr. Jesse Goodman about the spread of the H5N1 virus.  We will discuss what a virus is, how viruses migrate from animal populations to humans and assess the chances for a new pandemic.

Jesse L. Goodman, M.D., M.P.H., directs Georgetown COMPASS, which focuses on science based policy and research to address unmet public health needs with an emphasis on product development and access and antimicrobial resistance and stewardship. Until February 2014 he served as the Chief Scientist of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a position he assumed in 2009 along with Deputy Commissioner for Science and Public Health (2009-2012). As FDA's Chief Scientist he had broad responsibility for strategic leadership of crosscutting scientific and public health efforts, including developing and implementing FDA's Strategic Plan for Regulatory Science and FDA's public health preparedness and response and medical countermeasures efforts.

A graduate of Harvard, Dr. Goodman received his M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and did residency and fellowship training in Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was also Chief Medical Resident. 

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

The next episode will explore how to avoid the devastating psychological impacts of disasters. A native of Long Island, New York, Dr. Katz attended Harvard College and went on to Columbia University where he obtained his medical degree, completed his psychiatric residency training and served as chief resident in psychiatry. He subsequently completed a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at NYU. Dr. Katz has a private practice in general and forensic psychiatry in Manhattan and is a former President of the New York County District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association as well as a Distinguished Fellow of the APA.  Dr. Katz is married to Linda, a pediatrician and a child psychiatrist who is herself Chair of the Disaster Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and is the proud father of twenty-two-year-old Maya (whose travelled with him to Haiti and Japan and studies international relations) and eighteen-year-old Lev (whose travelled to Japan).

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

On this episode we speak with Dr. Jonathan Zehr.  He and his colleagues discovered an example of evolution in action.  Dr. Zehr will share with us how such a revolutionary discovery was made.

Jonathan Zehr is the distinguished professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Institute of Marine Sciences.  He and his colleagues have discovered the possibility of a complex cellular organism with a nitrogen-fixing organelle derived from endosymbiosis with a nitrogen fixing bacteria. This new organelle is called a nitroplast. Studying a marine alga with a cyanobacterial endosymbiont, Zehr and his colleagues  used soft x-ray tomography to visualize cell structure and division of the alga, revealing a coordinated cell cycle in which the endosymbiont divides and is split evenly, similar to the situation for plastids and mitochondria in these cells.  In other words instead of having a symbiotic relationship, the alga and bacteria integrated to form a newly evolved organism.  Dr. Zehr, welcome to the program.  We can’t wait to hear more about this revolutionary discovery.

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

Human beings have been breeding and cross-breeding plants for thousands of years.  We have done this to increase yield, taste, growth rate and in modern times shelf life in grocery stores.  With the discovery of the gene editing tool, CRISPR, plant breeding has risen to a whole new level; a level that has the potential to end world hunger, respond to the negative impacts of climate change, and even make it easier to eat black berries.

Dr. Tom Adams co-founded gene editing company Pairwise and serves as Chief Executive Officer. Tom has over 25 years of leadership experience heading up biotechnology for global companies, serving most recently as Vice President of Global Biotechnology at Monsanto where he led the team developing a broad range of innovative products. Tom wanted to realize the possibilities of CRISPR and gene editing in plants, and co-founded Pairwise to realize this potential in a mission-based environment. Formerly a faculty member at Texas A&M University, Tom holds a PhD in microbiology and plant science from Michigan State University and a BS in botany and plant pathology from Oregon State University. Tom is a long-time distance runner and often competes in local events.

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode we will explore the truth and consequences of the firing of National Park Service seasonal employees.  Joining us is former national park seasonal ranger, Rosanne McHenry

Rosanne has worked as a National Park Ranger and a California State Park Ranger in many different locations over the years, including the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Mt. Rainier National Park, Auburn State Recreation Area, Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, and Death Valley National Park, among others. “Serving as a park ranger gave her a unique opportunity to talk to people about our natural world, and to instill a deep sense of stewardship in each person she has met. This beautiful planet, our Earth, is our shared heritage, and we all play an important role in protecting it.

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

Moral bankruptcy threatens to destroy national parks under the guise of government efficiency. 

The firing of many national park service employees is illegal.  Why illegal?  Not because some codified law is being violated, rather because a higher moral law is violated.  That law is rooted in the human responsibility of stewardship.   The care and love for our natural and cultural resources seeks to resolve what E.O. Wilson called the great paradox.  That is the natural proclivity of human beings to expand and develop while at the same time conserving and protecting the resources needed for development and expansion. This is the great challenge of stewardship and our National Parks represent humanity’s attempt to resolve this paradox.

When we speak of the benefits of parks it is in these terms that we must speak.  It is dangerous to define the importance of parks and conservation only in terms of the monetary economic benefit.  We must not simply try and make the value of parks and conservation fit within the context of a market economy.   We must understand that the benefits of parks and conservation are more than a commodity in the marketplace, rather they are an important part of the creative processes of the universe.

Franklin Roosevelt noted that:

“There is nothing so American as our national parks. The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native. It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us. The parks stand as the outward symbol of the great human principle.

This episode gives an in depth argument for why we have a moral responsibility to protect our national parks.

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com

Send us Fan Mail

Dr. Traill Dowie discusses how Early Childhood Attachments Can Influence Mental Health. He is an Associate Professor of Psychotherapy, Research Fellow, clinician, and clinical supervisor with dual PhDs in Psychiatry and Philosophy. As a respected voice in the field of trauma, attachment, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, he bridges clinical practice with deep theoretical inquiry, bringing cutting-edge insights into the treatment of complex psychological conditions.

Full Transcript Available At:

https:/natureandsciencepodcast.com