University of California Audio Podcasts (Audio)

With the help of UC Berkeley mentors, Bay Area high school students gather at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science to pit the robots they had built against one another. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Science] [Show ID: 31639]

New Orleans native Sunni Patterson powerfully recites one of her many poems. Series: "Voices" [Public Affairs] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 31630]

Mobile devices are an integral part of our daily lives. But with their growing functionality and capability comes increased risk to personal privacy and security. At a fundamental level, mobile devices are incredibly hard to secure. Ben Zhao, Professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara, discusses some of the fundamental security and privacy risks in mobile device and recent work in identifying and addressing the problem of “Sybil Devices,” software code that pass themselves as mobile devices to manipulate and attack mobile apps from within. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 31419]

In the finale concert for UC San Diego Jazz Camp 2016, renowned bassist Mark Dresser leads a group of talented students in a performance of standards and new works. Series: "UC San Diego Jazz Camp" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 31428]

Harvard’s Philip Rightmire describes the rich array of early hominin fossils discovered at the Dmanisi site in the Georgian Caucasus. He maintains that these fossils can most reasonably be attributed to Homo erectus, but several of the skeletons display primitive anatomy. That means that the boundaries between H. erectus and other early Homo taxa are less distinct, making it difficult to identify diagnostic traits. He concludes that the emergence of the Homo clade was characterized more by an overlap of groups evolving 2.0 to 1.0 mya, rather than obvious diversity between species. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30639]

Renewable chemicals derived from plant biomass are attractive alternatives to those made from petroleum. To make them on the necessary scale chemical engineer Michelle O’Malley is looking at the digestive tract of large herbivores in order to engineer anaerobic gut microbes for improved biomass breakdown and chemical production. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 31417]

In his new book, Spitting in the Soup: Inside the Dirty Game of Doping in Sports, UC San Diego alumnus and sports journalist Mark Johnson traces the doping culture in professional sports, from the early days when pills meant progress, to the current day, when athletes are vilified for the use of performance-enhancing drugs. In his book, Johnson, who has covered cycling as a writer and photographer since the 1980s, explores the complex relationships that underlie elite sports culture. Series: "The Library Channel" [Public Affairs] [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Show ID: 31408]

Geoffrey Canada, President of the Harlem Children's Zone, explores how to motivate young citizens to engage in politics so that they can create and support the same economic opportunities as those enjoyed by previous generations. Series: "The UC Public Policy Channel" [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 31612]

Katie Hinde (Arizona State Univ) reveals in this talk that milk varies across species, populations, individuals, and across time.  She contends, therefore, that decoding mother's milk is necessary to enhance precision medicine for the most fragile infants and children in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 31603]

In this talk, Ajit Varki (UC San Diego) offers some surprising examples of common human diseases that appear to be either absent in our closest living evolutionary cousins (the so-called "great apes"), or manifest in a rather modified form. Given the close genetic similarity of all of these species, he contends that it is worth investigating these differences, with the goal of better understanding the pathological processes involved.

Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 31604]