This week’s episode comes to you live from 7 Stages in Atlanta, Georgia. Our expert is Dr. Cora MacBeth of Emory University. Dr MacBeth is a chemist, focusing her research on inorganic chemistry and green chemistry. At the MacBeth Lab, Cora and her team are attempting to create inorganic molecules that will function as catalysts for green chemical synthesis.

What is green chemistry?

According to the EPA, green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the generation of hazardous substances. Essentially, green chemistry is focused on preventing waste in chemical synthesis.

Read about the fundamentals of green chemistry:

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/greenchemistry/what-is-green-chemistry/principles/12-principles-of-green-chemistry.html

Why it matters:

Sustainability and safety are critical in curbing the impacts of climate change. Green chemistry not only focuses on reducing waste, it also has the potential to create eco-friendly alternatives to environmentally damaging products. Both of these goals can help keep the Earth and the global population healthy at the same time.

It's slightly more complicated than this.

Further Reading:

Read about the fundamentals of green chemistry:

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/greenchemistry/what-is-green-chemistry/principles/12-principles-of-green-chemistry.html

Dr. Macbeth’s most recent publication discusses the changing needs of STEM students pursuing work in non-academic fields:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177035

Check out any of Dr. MacBeth’s other work here:

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/macbethgroup/macbeth-group-home/publications/

More about the MacBeth Group:

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/macbethgroup/

This week’s episode comes to you from the Maine Science Festival. You’re the Expert presents Dr. Kristy Townsend, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Maine. Dr. Townsend’s work centers around the relationship between diet and energy. More specifically, she’s studying the brain’s role in appetite, hunger, and energy.

Dr. Townsend received her B.S. from the University of Maine, and her PhD from Boston University. At the Townsend Lab, Kristy and her colleagues are trying to understand how obesity develops, as well as the brain’s role in fat production and the body’s release of energy by burning calories. Dr. Townsend’s research impacts many other areas of study including aging, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic diseases and diabetes.

Why it Matters:

Dr. Townsend’s research is all about the relationship between food and the brain, which affects everyone who eats food. While there is no cure for obesity and other food-related diseases, Dr. Townsend’s work emphasizes the importance of prevention when it comes to weight gain. Healthy eating is an efficient way to keep both the body healthy, and Dr. Townsend is shedding light on the impact of food on the mind.

Further reading:

https://ktownsendlab.com/

Expert: Dr. Sarah Ruane

This week’s episode comes to you from the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY as part of the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival. Our expert this week is Dr. Sarah Ruane, a herpetologist and assistant professor at Rutgers University.

Dr. Ruane has previously worked at LSU and the American Museum of Natural History. Her work focuses primarily on snakes, and evolutionary biology in particular. At the Ruane Lab, Dr. Ruane and her colleagues are particularly interested in the systematics, phylogenetics, phylogeography of snakes.

Why it Matters:
Much of Dr. Ruane’s work and research help us understand the speciation of snakes, their ecological diversity and their significance in evolutionary biology. With this information, we can discover more about biology and the evolution of not only snakes, but all living organisms.

Further Reading:
Check out one of the projects Sara referenced in the podcast where she extracted DNA from one-hundred-year-old snake specimen:
https://sararuane.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/ruane_et_al-2017-molecular_ecology_resources.pdf

Dr. Ruane’s documentation of milksnakes’ responses to climate change:
https://sararuane.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/ruane-plos-one-2015.pdf

Follow Sara:
Website:
https://sararuane.wordpress.com/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/sara_and_snakes?lang=en

More about Dr. Cora MacBeth and Green Chemistry

More about Dr. Kristy Townsend and the Mysteries of Fat

More about Sara Ruane and Ghost Snakes