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Survival: The Human Body in Extreme Environments
How can a man survive two nights at 30 below zero in the White Mountains? How can another live through the night on a buoy in the Atlantic in winter? Our bodies are constantly monitoring, balancing and adapting to the outside environment through a process called “homeostasis.” We journey to the limits of human endurance as New England scientists and survivors examine how the body attempts to maintain its steady state at high mountain altitudes, in extreme cold and heat and even in outer space. All things being equal, why does one person survive and another not? Would you survive?
Meet the scientist: Dr. Robert Kenefick
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Interactive: Hypothermia (Flash required)
Lesson Plans: middle level | secondary level (PDF)
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Pandemic
This program grapples with what we know and don’t know about infectious disease, particularly viruses. Using the 1918 influenza pandemic as a case study, we will compare that disaster with today’s emerging invaders in northern New England––West Nile virus and Lyme disease. What is a virus? How does the body protect itself? How does a virus get past our immune system?
Meet the scientist: Jeffery Salloway
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Lesson Plans: middle level | secondary level (PDF)
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Summer: Getting the Bugs Out
It’s no secret that northern New England is home to many insects. So why are there 9,000 species of bugs here? What role do they play for us as pollinators and for one another as food? Also, what better time than summer to take inventory of all the biodiversity in our region? We join the region’s first BioBlitz as biologists–– in a race against time––count all the flora and fauna they can in 24 hours.
Meet the Scientist: Thomas Eisner
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Lesson Plans: middle level | secondary level (PDF)
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Aquaculture: Down on the Salmon Farm
Farmed salmon grown along the Maine coast provides an affordable alternative to wild salmon. But is aquaculture creating more problems than it's solving?
There is no shortage of people getting in on this rapidly changing industry in northern New England and across the globe. But aquaculture has had its share of controversy with pollution, toxins and diseases. Can science help find the solutions?
Researchers at universities around the region are racing to come up with innovations to help fish farmers. We'll see how they're trying to rescue a maligned industry...and save the small family fish farms that are suddenly disappearing from Maine waters.
Meet the Scientist: Michael Chambers
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Lesson Plans: middle level | secondary level (PDF)
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Archaeology
Sifting through a 6,000-year-old prehistoric settlement. Discovering the remains of 1812 soldiers under a city seafood shop. We'll follow several teams of professional and amateur archaeologists as they unearth pieces of northern New England's past. We'll see the latest techniques and technologies they're using to detect, excavate and preserve these interesting finds.
Meet the Scientist: Dick Boisvert
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Lesson Plans: middle level | secondary level (PDF)
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The Scientist
What does a modern scientist really do? The classic picture of men in white lab coats is dispelled with this in-depth look at two groups of local scientists at work. From field biologists at Allied Whale in Bar Harbor, Maine who study the largest animals on earth, to nanoscientists at the University of New Hampshire who focus on the micro-world of atoms and molecules, we get an inside look at men and women on the frontiers of science today.
Meet the Scientists: Allied Whale | The Nano Group
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Lesson Plans: middle level | secondary level (PDF)
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Episodes from Past Seasons of QUEST
View episode information for past seasons: 2004 | 2003
Transcripts from Past Episodes of QUEST
2004 | 2003 | Episodes
prior to 2003
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