NOVA: Season 15

Episode 1: Top Gun and Beyond 1988-01-19 | 55 min Today's sophisticated fighter jets can almost fly themselves, but well-trained pilots are still needed to win air battles. NOVA looks at how planes and pilots are adapting to high technology.

Episode 2: How to Create a Junk Food 1988-01-26 | 55 min Julia Child introduces NOVA's behind-the-scenes look at how science aids in the creation of snack foods.

Episode 3: Buried in Ice 1988-02-02 | 55 min Scientists investigate the frozen remains of members of the 19th century Franklin Expedition to the Canadian Arctic and ask why all perished.

Episode 4: Why Planes Burn 1988-02-09 | 55 min Airplane fires are often deadly. NOVA looks at efforts to make fires aboard planes less likely and more survivable.

Episode 5: Battles in the War on Cancer: A Wonder Drug on Trial 1988-02-23 | 55 min In part one of a two-part special presentation, NOVA reports on the trials to determine whether the new drug Interleukin-2—the first to make use of the body's own disease-fighting strategy—will live up to its promise as a pivotal cancer breakthrough. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates.

Episode 6: Battles in the War on Cancer: Turning the Tide 1988-03-01 | 55 min Breast cancer claims the lives of four American women every hour. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates this NOVA report on stepped-up efforts to reduce the death rate from this all-too-common killer.

Episode 7: The Mystery of the Master Builders 1988-03-08 | 55 min Princeton professor and author Robert Mark tracks down the engineering secrets of some of the beautiful buildings in the world including Notre Dame in Paris, St. Paul in London and the Roman Pantheon.

Episode 8: Whale Rescue 1988-03-15 | 55 min It was a blustery day in December 1986, and the New England Coast was in the midst of a winter storm, accompanied by strong on-shore gales and an unusually high tide—conditions perfect for stranding whales in the confined shallows of Cape Cod. NOVA recounts this tragic episode and the happy suprise ending for the young whales who survived after being nursed back to health by the New England Aquarium in Boston.

Episode 9: The Man Who Loved Numbers 1988-03-22 | 55 min NOVA explores the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a poor clerk from India who astounded mathematicians in the 1910s with his brilliant insight into the world of numbers.

Episode 10: Race for the Superconductor 1988-03-29 | 55 min NOVA charts an electronics revolution in the making as Japan and the United States race to develop a material that will conduct electricity at room temperature with zero resistance.

Episode 11: Can You Still Get Polio? 1988-04-05 | 55 min Most cases of polio in this country are caused by the vaccine designed to prevent it. NOVA examines the controvery surrounding the nation's vaccine policy.

Episode 12: Pioneers of Surgery: The Brutal Craft 1988-09-06 | 55 min Part one of a four-part series on the pioneers of modern surgery relives the early days, when surgery was practiced without the benefit of anaesthesia or antisceptics and patients usually died.

Episode 13: Pioneers of Surgery: Into the Heart 1988-09-13 | 55 min Once unthinkable, open-heart surgery is now an everyday miracle. NOVA looks at the brave doctors and patients who make it possible.

Episode 14: Pioneers of Surgery: New Organs for Old 1988-09-20 | 55 min From kidneys to hearts, NOVA examines the daring attempts to replace diseased organs with transplanted ones.

Episode 15: Pioneers of Surgery: Beyond the Knife 1988-09-27 | 55 min Surgeons have always been eager to help patients, even at the risk of killing them. NOVA looks at some of the excesses of surgery, and at how new drugs and technologies are rendering some operations obsolete.

Episode 16: Can the Vatican Save the Sistine Chapel? 1988-10-04 | 55 min Science meets art in the controversial effort to restore Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes.

Episode 17: Can the Next President Win the Space Race? 1988-10-11 | 55 min Thirty years after Sputnik, the United States space program is mired in uncertainty, while the Russians, Europeans, Japanese and others sprint onward and upward.

Episode 18: Do Scientists Cheat? 1988-10-18 | 55 min NOVA examines the troubling question of scientific fraud: How prevalent is it? Who commits it? And what happens when the perpetrators are caught?

Episode 19: Who Shot President Kennedy? 1988-11-15 | 55 min Using previously unavailable technology, NOVA probes the available evidence surrounding the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Episode 20: The Light Stuff 1988-11-22 | 55 min Reliving a Greek myth takes an effort of mythic proportions, as NOVA reveals in its behind-the-scenes report of a human powered-flight across the Aegean Sea, a journey that symbolically recreated the mythical flight of Daedalus. NOVA follows the epic journey of the human-powered plane Daedalus 88 from the early prototypes to its dramatic landing in the surf after a 74-mile flight from the island of Crete to Santorini.

Episode 21: The All-American Bear 1988-12-06 | 55 min The life of the shy, intelligent black bear in the wild—foraging, mating, playing and constantly preparing for its remarkable hibernation—is captured for the first time on film by NOVA.

Episode 22: Can We Make a Better Doctor? 1988-12-13 | 55 min NOVA embarks on a 10-year project to profile—in its entirety—the education of a doctor. In the premiere episode, we follow a handful of students as they start their freshman year at Harvard Medical School under a revolutionary program emphasizing early clinical contact with patients.

NOVA: Season 15

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