- Popular Newsmagazine Airs on Its Own Night This Summer; Neil deGrasse Tyson Hosts Six New Episodes - In its third season, NOVA scienceNOW steps away from its parent, NOVA, and airs on its own night -- Wednesday -- at a new time, 9:00 p.m. Each of the six new episodes, airing Wednesdays, June 25-July 30, 2008, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET on PBS, consists of several segments that cover a variety of cutting-edge science topics. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson continues as host of this fast-paced newsmagazine program. With a team of correspondents in the field, the shows explore new developments in computer science, astronomy, engineering and medicine, including a segment on a dark matter detector buried at the foot of an abandoned mine, a report from a lab where mice are retrieving their lost memories and a search for the first primate, which may turn out to be a tree-climbing creature the size of a mouse. Scientists profiled in this summer's episodes include Pardis Sabeti, a bass-playing geneticist who combines rhythmic intensity and impassioned vocals with cutting-edge science; Edie Widder, a specialist in marine bioluminescence -- the biochemical emission of light by ocean animals -- who's witnessing things never before recorded on the ocean floor; and Yoky Matsuoka, once a potential world-class tennis player who's now a leader in the emerging field of neurobotics -- a fusion of neuroscience and robotics that can help disabled people.
Other scientists featured in NOVA scienceNOW segments include Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, who jumped the border fence separating Mexico and the U.S. two decades ago and is now an assistant professor of neurosurgery and oncology at Johns Hopkins University; Hany Farid, an "accidental scientist" and Dartmouth professor who has developed software that can detect alterations in digital images; and Lonnie Thompson, a recent winner of the prestigious National Medal of Science, who has been drilling ice cores in the tropics since 1976.
NOVA scienceNOW delves into such varied topics as the repair of the Hubble space telescope; NASA's mission to send a lander to Mars; the continuing search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI); creating embryonic-like stem cells without an embryo; what the songs of zebra finches can tell us about the human evolution of language; "smart" bridges; a new enemy on the battlefields of Iraq: a drug-resistant bacterium; an extraordinary paleontological cold case involving the intertwined tusks of two mammoths; the mystery of the Northern Lights; carbon sequestration; the pros and cons of a personal genetic profile; and the medical comeback of ... leeches.
NOVA scienceNOW also pays tribute to "cancer warrior" Judah Folkman, who died in January 2008. Dr. Folkman spent much of his early career convincing the scientific establishment of the existence and importance of angiogenesis -- the process by which tumors prompt the growth of blood vessels to help with their survival -- and then devoted his remaining years to applying it to medical research. New work in the Folkman lab, based on the principles of angiogenesis, is leading to earlier detection of cancer, better drugs and even cures for diseases like macular degeneration. Underwriters: Pfizer, National Science Foundation, The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Public Television Viewers and PBS.
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