Catalyst

8:00pm – Thursday, June 3 on ABC1

Land Speed Record In 1898 the land speed record stood at just 63 kilometres per hour. Today it’s 1,223 km/h.

Roscoe McGlashan wants to go even faster. Graham Phillips travels to Perth, at a somewhat slower pace, to kick the tyres of the jet powered vehicle Roscoe used in his 1996 record attempt, and checks out his latest dream machine – powered by a rocket! The rocket will carry two and a half tonnes of hydrogen peroxide that will provide the thrust that Roscoe believes will propel the car to its target speed of 1,600 kilometres an hour.

Green Buildings Over 40 percent of all waste produced in Australia comes from building construction and demolition. About 6 million tonnes of waste is sent to land fill each year. But what if we were to recycle buildings? Tanya Ha finds out what a life cycle analysis of a building is, and how a new type of greener cement is set to replace the traditional form of the most commonly used building material.

Toxic Sediments Environmental reform and the introduction of offshore sewage outlets have improved the quality of Australian waterways including Sydney Harbour. But, beneath the surface sparkle and shine lurks a dark menace that renders bottom feeding fish like mullet dangerous to eat.

Mark Horstman reports on the deadly toxins that continue to enter Australia’s most famous harbour – every day.

Crayfish Attraction What do crustaceans put behind their ears to attract a mate? For crayfish the answer is as simple as taking a tinkle. Females illicit male mating behaviour by urinating, but the urine also provides a chemical signal to encourage aggressive behaviour. The female provokes fights with males to weed out the weaklings and ensure that only the strongest males will sire her progeny.

8:00pm – Thursday, May 27 on ABC1

Mt Ruapehu Disaster movies depict the dangers of a volcano as red-hot rivers of lava pouring over unprotected villages or a rain of ash and boulders from a catastrophic explosion. But New Zealand’s deadliest volcano kills with lahars, flows of water and volcanic debris, that combine to form a dense fast-moving mud capable of taking out a bridge or smothering a ski field in seconds.

Mount Ruapehu is New Zealand’s largest active volcano. It’s also a popular skiing and hiking destination – good reasons to be able to predict when it will erupt again – and with as much warning as possible. Paul Willis visits volcanologists closely monitoring the volcano in order to predict when it may go off.

Clever Cancer While looking into the epigenome of prostate cancer, geneticists at Sydney’s Garvan Institute have discovered that cancer is more complex and sophisticated than previously thought.

Cancer tumours have now been revealed as clever and dedicated entities that can change their environment to suit a single purpose – to grow. Dr Maryanne Demasi explores this new knowledge and asks whether it may provide the key to more effective treatments.

Dr Craig Venter Dr Craig Venter is renowned for taking on the scientific establishment in a race to write the human genetic code. His once controversial fast-track approach to sequencing DNA was adopted as an industry standard and in 2007 he was the first to publish the complete genome of a human being – himself.

Graham Phillips discovers that Dr Venter is now tantalisingly close to an equally, if not more remarkable achievement – genuinely intelligent design. The implications could see machines replaced with biology.

Finch Fight In the stunning landscape of the Kimberley a fight has broken out between the Gouldian finch, the pin up bird of the aviary, and the long tailed finch, a hardy little battler. Researchers from Macquarie University are using CCTV cameras and clever tactics to keep the peace.

8:00pm – Thursday, May 20 on ABC1

Trawl Team The sea floor of the Southern Ocean covers a vast area stretching right around the globe – much of it is more than two kilometres down.

The mysterious benthic life – that is, what lives on the seafloor – has only recently started to be revealed. This rugged realm is home to delicate and bizarre creatures like the sea spiders, polychaete worms and ancient bamboo coral that the research team bring aboard.

Mark Horstman and cameraman Kevin May spent a month in Antarctic waters to work alongside the trawl team at the bottom of the world. While surveying protected areas, underwater cameras capture startling evidence of illegal long line fishing. Compelling proof comes when 3km of rope and rusty hooks is snared in one of the trawl nets and dragged aboard the Aurora Australis.

Megafauna Giant Marsupials thrived in Australia for over a million years until they completely disappeared somewhere around 40,000 years ago….give or take some tens of thousands of years.

What exactly happened to the giant wombats, killer kangaroos, monstrous geese and other beasts has been the source of contentious debate. One school of thought is that the arrival of humans sealed their fate by swiftly hunting them into extinction, while others contend that other factors were to blame.

Paul Willis travels to the only archaeological dig in the country that might be able to answer this and other prehistoric mysteries.

Green Roofs On a hot day, office workers are protected from the heat outside by power hungry, air- conditioned buildings.

Ironically, the buildings themselves contribute to the heat of the day, as clusters of the concrete and brick structures create what is known as the heat island effect.

In the first of a series of reports on the science of sustainability, Tanya Ha turns her infrared spotlight to rooftops to demonstrate the benefits of a really efficient cooling system – commonly known as the garden!

8:00pm – Thursday, May 6 on ABC1

Magic Lab Magical illusions rely on the way our brain interprets visual information. By trial and error magicians have learned to capitalise on this fact in their sleight of hand trade. Now, neurologists in the U.S. are finding exactly what’s going on in our brains when we’re deceived by a hand that’s quicker than the eye.

Jonica Newby visits Las Vegas to meet some magicians who are revealing their trade secrets for science.

Toxic Crops Double the food with half the resources by 2050 – that’s what scientists say we need to do to provide world food security for a predicted population of 8.5 billion people. Climate change will make the job harder, but another challenge is yet to make its impact fully known.

Plants love carbon dioxide, so the increased levels of CO2 in our atmosphere due to anthropogenic causes should help plants to thrive. However, Australian scientists report that plants redirect this boon toward the production of toxins that help protect them against predator attack, such as animals and insects. Experiments have also indicated that there is a reduced level of protein in some crops. This will have long ranging impacts on food supplies for humans and livestock. One crop, cassava, an important staple in many poor nations, also shows signs of producing less of its edible tubers.

Graham Phillips reports how increasing levels of CO2 will affect food security.

Big Prawns One of the great advantages of growing food in saltwater is that, essentially, it’s drought-proof farming.

No wonder then that scientists are turning to marine aquaculture to develop more efficient ways of producing food for our tables.

In a process similar to that used in developing the breed lines in livestock, the best prawns are selected for future generations. But when each female prawn can have around a quarter of a million babies, tracing the parents can be tricky. That’s where DNA fingerprinting comes in.

Surfing scientist Ruben Meerman went to see how CSIRO scientists on the Gold Coast are turning the tiger into the king of the prawn jungle.

8:00pm – Thursday, April 29 on ABC1

Antarctic Glaciers During the southern summer, Mark Horstman and Dr Paul Willis travelled to opposite sides of Antarctica.

Their purpose: to witness just how the east and west of the continent are reacting differently to climate change.

Antarctica contains around 90% of the world’s snow and ice. But climate change and ocean warming are causing the giant ice shelves that buttress the glaciers to break down. This in turn is allowing the glaciers to slide faster into the sea.

Otto Nordenskjöld Around the turn of the 20th century in what is known as Antarctica’s Heroic Age, 16 expeditions set off from 8 different countries for the icy continent. While names like Mawson, Scott and Amundsen are well known, it’s easy to overlook the legacy of Antarctica’s other early explorers. Dr Paul Willis takes up the story of Otto Nordenskjöld. His epic ordeal rivals that of Shackleton and he remains one of the most significant pioneers of Antarctic research.

Southern Ocean Sentinel The Southern Ocean stretches right around the planet, linking the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. It’s like a carbon sponge that helps buffer the rest of the world from global warming.

But it’s also the first to feel the impacts of climate change. Mark Horstman goes aboard the Aurora Australis with scientists studying tiny plankton for clues about the pace and effects of climate change in the Southern Ocean.

10:00am – Thursday, January 1 on ABC1

Many illnesses are caused, at least in part, by faulty genes. And for decades there’s been the dream of fixing up these mistakes with genetic engineering. Genetic engineering hasn’t progressed as quickly as people had hoped, but scientists have come up with another way of correcting genetic mistakes.

Graham Phillips meets researchers in Perth who have devised a way to skip faulty sections of genes during the cell production process. (Just as a computer patch might instruct a computer to skip faulty sections of code.) The researchers’ first focus is on people with muscular dystrophy: a disease caused by defects in just one particular gene. However the scientists’ technique is so fundamental it could eventually be used to treat many other genetic disorders, including very common diseases that involve multiple defective genes, like cancers and Alzheimer’s.

The Male Pill For almost 50 years ‘The Pill’ has offered women a convenient, effective and reversible means of contraception. But despite decades of research the development of its male counterpart has remained elusive.

Dr. Maryanne Demasi visited Melbourne’s Prince Henry’s Institute to look at some research that’s suggesting that it may not be too far away.

Peruvian Mummy Locked away in the little known McLeay museum in Sydney lies a mummy shrouded in mystery. Since her existence was uncovered in the 1960s many have tried to find out who she was, where she came from and how she got to be there.

But all efforts to answer these questions have remained unanswered – until now.

To crack this coldest of cases, Dr Paul Willis follows a trail of new evidence – all the way to Chile.

Animal Action – Redback Spiders Redback spiders are infamous for their venomous bite that can cause serious disruption to our nervous system. Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada have recorded their macabre nocturnal antics which show just how nasty the female’s love bite can be for a male with a fatal attraction.

http://abc.net.au/iview/

8:00pm – Thursday, April 15 on ABC1

School of Hard Knoncks Former professional footballer and wrestler Chris Nowinski had to give up making a living from sport due to persistent headaches. In 2007 he set up the Sports Legacy Institute in association with Boston Medical School, and sent out a call for sportsmen to pledge their brains. Since then, the high incidence of pathology found amongst young ex-footballers has shocked the experts. One relatively young brain shows lesions similar to that of a brain more than 50 years older with Alzheimer’s.

Footballers of all codes indulge in a culture of heroism and take pride in their ability to take a few knocks on the chin, but when Jonica Newby visits Boston University in the U.S. she looks at research that is changing attitudes and the rules of contact sports.

Fab Fibre It’s long been thought that our Western lifestyle has contributed to the rapid rise in the incidence of inflammatory diseases. But could this trend be turned around by boosting our consumption of just one food group? Researchers at the Garvan institute in Sydney have recently shown a link between dietary fibre and our immune system.

Dr. Maryanne Demasi finds out if more roughage in our diet could help control common diseases like asthma, allergies and arthritis.

Alex Veldman – Science in Profile Dr Alex Veldman, a neonatologist at Monash Newborn in Melbourne, works tirelessly treating sick babies. Occasionally he comes across a rare case such as Baby Z. Acting with courage and determination, Dr Veldman overcame significant obstacles to save the infant girl from a fatal disease – previously thought to be untreatable. This remarkable story underpins Dr Veldman’s stellar career.

Animal Action – Chameleon Grasshopper High in the alpine country of Kosciuszko in NSW lives the Chameleon Grasshopper. This diminutive creature turns blue when the temperature rises and in breeding season its behaviour really hots up. A PhD student recorded the male’s demonstrative ‘roaring’ antics – after beating off competitors the triumphant male flails his arms, opens his mouth wide and rears up while astride the female. http://abc.net.au/iview/

8:00pm – Thursday, April 8 on ABC1

LIDAR Most of the world’s climate scientists are studying changes close to earth in the troposphere or a little further out in the stratosphere, but researchers in Antarctica have been looking more than 50 kilometres above the earth’s surface, where the Southern Lights, or Southern Aurora, phenomenon occurs. The researchers have been observing how, paradoxically, as greenhouse emissions heat the lower atmosphere they cause the upper atmosphere to cool.

Mark Horstman visits a small hut on the edge of Antarctica to take a look at the light detection and ranging equipment, LIDAR, that is collecting crucial climate change data and building a stunning picture of the mysterious noctilucent clouds in the mesosphere.

Stem Cell Ethics Using human embryos for stem cell research has long been a controversial issue but a recent breakthrough has put a new complexion on the debate. Since a Japanese scientist first developed a new kind of cell, IPS or Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, it has been speculated that the need to use human embryos for stem cell therapies might be eliminated.

Researchers believe there is much to be gained from using the thousands of surplus IVF embryos sitting in storage across Australia. While it is legal to use these leftover embryos for research purposes, does using them reduce human life to a commodity.

Dr Maryanne Demasi explores whether the new discoveries could end the debate for good.

Follow the Leader Is it best to be an individual and act on your own or is it better to follow the pack? It’s a question for all social animals from sheep to horses, fish to birds – even for humans – and it’s a question of survival. But, just how do large assemblies of animals manage to make efficient decisions.

Ruben Meerman takes a look at some Sydney University research that’s seeing what tiny mosquito fish can teach us about the bigger picture of making group decisions.

Fundamentals with Bernie Hobbs – Precious Metals What puts the precious into precious metals? Bernie Hobbs shines her ‘Fundamental’ spotlight on the treasures of the periodic table to find out why the glitter of gold is so preciously proverbial. http://abc.net.au/iview/

8:00pm – Thursday, April 1 on ABC1

Making Life Because embryos are potential human beings, embryonic stem cell research stirs furious ethical debate. But in what is being hailed as the stem cell breakthrough of the century, Japanese scientists have discovered an alternative type of cell similar to embryonic stem cells, only these are derived from our skin. Chinese researchers then shocked the world by proving these cells had the potential to create new life. Dr Maryanne Demasi travelled to China to find out how.

Growing Glaciers Evidence from many sources shows the average global climate is warming. Glaciers are a good indicator of climate change, generally speaking the warmer it gets the more they shrink. But, recently there has been much concern that not all glaciers are following this pattern. Dr Paul Willis treks across the Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers in New Zealand to find out why they are bucking the trend.

Thomas Borody Stress and lifestyle were once thought to be the cause of stomach ulcers. In 2005 Robin Warren and Barry Marshall were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology for their discovery of a bacteria and its role in gastric ulcer disease – helicobacter pylori. The gastroenterologist responsible for developing an antibiotic treatment for ulcers was Dr Thomas Borody. In this ‘Science in Profile’ segment, we find out about his research into other debilitating chronic inflammatory diseases.

Animal Action – Ningaloo Reef Ningaloo Marine Park has been nominated for world heritage listing, making it a prime target for research. The University of Western Australia left hundreds of cameras rolling to put together a picture of what goes on at various depths up to 333 metres below the surface. The passing parade is absorbing and delightful viewing. http://abc.net.au/iview/

8:00pm – Thursday, March 25 on ABC1

Geoengineering You could think of it as fighting pollution with pollution: combating global warming by deliberately releasing sulphate particles into the sky. While carbon emissions warm us, sulphates could cool the planet. Many consider the idea of engineering our climate as a dangerous way of avoiding our responsibility to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Others have seen it is a convenient way of tackling global warming without adversely affecting the economy. Now, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions, The Royal Society, says geoengineering should be investigated. They recommend that a number of options, from artificially fertilising the oceans to creating synthetic trees, be assessed for their potential benefits, dangers and costs. Graham Phillips travels to Europe to investigate this highly controversial movement in climate change science.

Future Car Bill Mitchell of MIT, Boston, has been working on a new future in urban transport – a radical technology that could change the way we drive. Bill and his team at MIT, have been working on collapsible, stackable electric vehicles that owe their flexibility and cheapness to a revolutionary new drive system known as in-wheel motors. Jonica Newby takes a prototype for a spin and becomes the first Australian to test ride a bicycle powered by the same technology.

Western Waves Ocean waves contain truly awesome power. Storm swells can do terrible damage to our beaches and coastal eco-systems. But, waves also play a positive role in sustaining sea life. Surfing Scientist, Ruben Meerman takes us below the surf to find how the waves of coastal WA feed life among the reefs.

Forensic Scientist Dr James Robertson is the man in charge of Australia’s real life CSI. As Head of Forensics for the Australian Federal Police, he has seen the department grow from modest beginnings to a multi-site, multi-discipline department. And, he takes great pleasure in catching criminals with science.