After debuting earlier this year, new episodes of the “Origins Science Scholars Program” will begin airing again this week on the WVIZ/PBS World channel, one of ideastream’s digital television channels. Episodes air Thursday nights at 9 p.m.
In the first episode, airing Aug. 2, physics and astronomy professor Glenn Starkman will present “From Atoms to Quarks.” Starkman, also director of the Institute for the Science of Origins, will follow the historical evolution of our view of the fundamental particles of matter, starting from the Periodic Table of the Elements and concluding with the modern picture of quarks and leptons.
The next episode will be “The Standard Model: Fundamental Forces and the Origins of Mass” (Aug. 9), in which Dean Cyrus Taylor will describe how the fundamental particles of matter interact with each other and with the vacuum.
Following that, Taylor and Starkman will join together for “Beyond the Standard Model” (Aug. 16) to discuss why some physicists believe the Standard Model can’t be the ultimate theory of everything.
Future episodes also will include “The Origins of Disease” (Aug. 23) and “The Origins of Immunity” (Aug. 30), in which pathology professor Neil Greenspan will discuss how and why humans are susceptible disease, and how the immune system fights disease. In addition, medicine professor Robert Salata will discuss influenza as an example of rapid evolution in “Pandemic Influenza” (Sept. 6), and evolutionary biology lecturer Patricia Princehouse will discuss how breeds of dogs emerged from wild ancestors in “On the Origin of Dogs” (Sept. 13).
A partnership between Case Western Reserve University, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History and WVIZ/PBS ideastream, the program connects television viewers in Northeast Ohio with the thoughts of some of the leading scholars of the origins sciences. Sixteen presentations from Case Western Reserve’s 2011 Institute for the Science of Origins’ “Origins Science Scholars Program” aired January through May this year.
The Origins Science Scholars Program, produced with the generous support of Richard Morrison, is designed to allow members of the community to engage with each other and with leading scholars of the origins sciences to investigate a range of topics.
The College of Arts and Sciences and MediaVision Production group partnered with ideastream and The Cleveland Museum of Natural History in creating the broadcast series.