Science (Audio)

As we rethink our energy use, we focus on the highest polluters, and at a global scale. But energy use at a much finer scale seriously threatens the health and safety of hundreds of millions of people who still cook on inefficient wood stoves in developing countries. Berkeley professor Ashok Gadgil and his students launched the Berkeley Darfur Stove project to design and build efficient and inexpensive stoves. They then created a non-profit to manufacture the $20 stoves in Mumbai. The stoves’ efficiency halves the fuel wood to cook each meal, and the time needed to collect it. Women purchasing fuel wood saved about $260 per year. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Show ID: 33083]

Sometimes, trying to make things better actually makes them worse. If only a few people use apps to evade traffic snarls, everything works, but as more and more drivers tap on navigation apps for the fastest route around the freeway crawl, they often slow things down. They create new congestion -- at freeway exits and on streets not designed for heavy traffic. Berkeley’s Alexandre Bayen is working to devise policy and technologies that help app makers work collaboratively with city planners. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Show ID: 33081]

Eva Cisneros is a fourth-year student at UC Merced and seeks to improve campus life by offering the community a space to access nature and by providing a site for academic education and research through a UC Merced arboretum. Modeled on the UC Davis arboretum, Merced’s site would follow the existing canal, cover five acres, and be focused on the unique climate, drought-tolerant plants and sustainable landscaping. Series: "Sustainable California" [Show ID: 33863]

Yolanda Medrano is a third-year student at UC Merced and is looking to make every step we take count for energy production. She proposes adding energy-producing floor panels to entrances to the library and other high-traffic areas to power doors, increasing building efficiency for the University’s triple zero commitment. Though a costly investment, UC Merced would be the first university to invest in this technology, producing clean energy through walking, and effectively reduce the energy footprint of campus.

Series: "Sustainable California" [Show ID: 33864]

UC Berkeley graduate student Jeffrey Benca demonstrates the experiment showing how pine trees became temporarily sterile when exposed to intense UV radiation, supporting the theory that ozone depletion may have caused the Earth's largest mass extinction (the Permian Extinction). Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Show ID: 33954]

William Fernandez is a third-year student at UC Merced who is an avid bike rider. He develops bike-friendly improvements to the two main roads to campus, Bellevue and Lake Roads. With his research, he details simple solutions while indicating that the alternatives are more taxing on the environment. His call to action to improve transit for many of the 8,000 students is titled BUSC: Balance, Update, Solar and Core. William hopes that the repairs to the bike lanes will help students feel safe to ride their bikes, supporting an environmentally friendly commute option to campus and around the city. Series: "Sustainable California" [Show ID: 33862]

In the Santa Cruz mountains, UC Berkeley archaeologists and anthropologists have joined with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and California State Parks to uncover ancient tribal practices to help bring their history to light and find more sustainable approaches to land management. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Show ID: 33979]

Plants have evolved the capability to convert atmospheric CO2 into biopolymers and therefore represent distributed systems for carbon removal that are highly scalable. Wolfgang Busch, Ph.D., Associate Professor Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, Salk Institute, explains the possibilities of efficient carbon storage in plants. Series: "Exploring Ethics" [Show ID: 33883]

Counterfeit opioids are being abused by people of all ages. Tim K. Mackey, MAS, PhD discusses the addiction and how it is being supplied. Series: "Exploring Ethics" [Show ID: 33884]

As of May, 2017, about 90 percent of all countries around the world have committed to the ambitious Paris Agreement to combat global climate change. But how to confirm that countries are maintaining their pledges, and how can they be encouraged to do better than their pledges? Berkeley climate modeler Inez Fung is part of an international scientific team refining the detection skills of the new Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, launched in 2014. Series: "Cal Future Forum: Our Changing World" [Show ID: 33069]