Nature & Planet Earth

Ice on earth is on the retreat, both on alpine glaciers and also on the two remaining ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. There are many consequences emerging from this such as rising sea levels, a changing ocean circulation, and also migrating habitats for flora and fauna. Join us on a journey visiting different icy worlds on the quest to find the driving mechanisms of change that will shape our future. Expect tents in the snow, cold coffee, and of course the mandatory penguin.

Seaweeds are important members of marine ecosystems around the world. But did you know that they can also tell us something about how evolution works? A group of seaweeds called "brown algae" are complex organisms that look like plants, but the evolutionary relationship between brown algae and plants is very distant, as distant as the relationship between plants and animals. In fact, they are so distant from the organisms we know that many of their genes are found nowhere else in nature. Where did these genes come from? And how can this observation help us answer the larger question of how new genes arise in evolution? Join me on this journey as we explore topics such as the evolution of algae, the birth of the first proteins during the origin of similarity, and how "biological information" emerges from an "informationless" background.

You’ve probably seen those colourful brain scans. And heard some stories about how brain cells manage to make animals (like us) see and think and feel and learn. And yet, despite all that, we still don’t understand the very language in which those neurons talk to one another! But in a tiny transparent fish, we can begin to listen...