Episode
NOVA: Living Machines
Overview
NOVA explores the science of natural engineering and asks the basic questions: what makes a good design in nature and why did a particular plant or animal adopt a particular design?
Details
- Series
- NOVA
- Season
- Season 7
- Episode
- Episode 3
- Air date
- 1980-02-05
- Runtime
- 55 min
Episode context
Living Machines is Episode 3 in Season 7 of NOVA. It aired on 1980-02-05. The runtime is 55 min.
Previous / Next
Episode 2: A is for Atom, B is for Bomb
NOVA profiles Dr. Edward Teller, the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb," an acclaimed scientific genius and brilliant theoretician, and a man considered by some the most dangerous scientist in the United States.
Episode 4: Portrait of a Killer
More than 40 million Americans are afflicted by cardiovascular disease. NOVA examines the new information on risk factors and possible prevention of heart attacks and Strokes—often fatal diseases.
More episodes from this season
Episode 1: The Elusive Illness
Aborigines in Australia, woodchucks in Pennsylvania, the Nobel Prize in Stockholm and the gay community in New York City—what could possibly link such disparate elements? The answer is Hepatitis. NOVA examines this elusive disease, what causes it, how it is spread and how you get rid of it.
Episode 5: Umealit: The Whale Hunters
Whaling is an integral part of Eskimo life, and a major source of food; even so, conservationists are seeking to restrict the hunting of bowheads in Alaska.
Episode 6: The Safety Factor
Recent aircraft accidents have raised the question of just how safe modern commercial aviation really is. NOVA looks at some of the problems and experimental efforts underway to deal with them.
Episode 7: A Mediterranean Prospect
Every year, millions of tourists converge on the Mediterranean's sunny coasts, lured by the prospect of bathing in clear, azure waters and basking in semi-tropical sun. But years of use and abuse have taken their toll on the once idyllic Mediterranean and the "world's biggest swimming pool" has become the world's biggest open sewer. NOVA explores the complex problems that plague the Mediterranean's future.
Episode 8: Mr. Ludwig's Tropical Dreamland
NOVA explores the amazing Jari project of the Amazon basin. Eleven years ago, 3.5 million acres of virgin jungle were bought by the reclusive billionaire, Daniel K. Ludwig.
Episode 9: The Pinks and the Blues
NOVA explores the shaping and molding of the male and female personality. From infancy through childhood, the program documents the impact of culture on the development of sex differences. Known as "The Secret Of The Sexes" as the Vestron Video release of 1988.
Episode 10: The Cancer Detectives of Lin Xian
In one of the first films ever to come out of modern China, NOVA sifts through clues that Chinese scientists have uncovered in their pursuit of particularly virulent and elusive forms of cancer from which one out of every four people die.
Episode 11: The Sea Behind the Dunes
One year in the intricate life of a coastal lagoon unfolds in an hour's time when NOVA documents the fragile tidal ecosystem which supports the entire ocean.
Episode 12: Do We Really Need the Rockes?
Locked in the shale of the Western Rocky Mountains is more oil than in the Middle East—more than enough to solve our dependence on foreign crude oil. But will shale oil solve our gasoline shortage, or will it simply turn the Rockies into a gigantic industrial zone? NOVA explores the promise and the problems of shale oil.
Episode 13: The Big IF
Is interferon—known as IF in medical shorthand—the wonder drug and cure for cancer that some doctors claim? NOVA travels to London, Stockholm, Houston, San Francisco, and New Haven in search of the answer in the most complete film on interferon ever to appear on American television.