Month: April 2012

Ron Krauss: Saturated Fat and Red Meat? It Depends

Photo from wikimedia

We look at the health effects of saturated fat and red meat with one of the world’s leading scientists in the field – Ron Krauss.  His recent studies show that replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates INCREASES heart disease risk.  But combining high saturated fat with moderate carbs and then adding red meat — think cheeseburger on a bun — is yet another story.   For the extended version, go here.

Hosts: Joel Parker and Jim Pullen
Producer: Shelley Schlender
Engineer: Shelley Schlender and Jim Pullen
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Communicating with dolphins

Dolphins are intelligent and communicative creatures within their own species and with the other animals native to their waters. Still, a hundred million years of evolutionary history and pressures imposed by radically different environments separate dolphins and humans. Can that enormous chasm be crossed? Can we have a conversation with an alien, a different and intelligent species? Twenty-seven years ago, Dr. Denise Herzing first slipped into the warm and clear Bahaman waters in a quest to answer those questions. And every spring since then, she has gathered the crew, the equipment, the money, the courage and the patience to return to work cooperatively with them, unfettered in the wild. Dr. Herzing believes that first we have to understand dolphin society and give them the freedom to choose to communicate with us. This week on How On Earth, Jim Pullen talks with Dr. Herzing about how she communicates with Atlantic Spotted dolphins (start at 6:48).

Hosts: Breanna Draxler and Beth Bartel
Producer: Jim Pullen
Engineer: Jim Pullen
Additional contributions: Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Kinetic Sculptures Refocus the Human Perspective

Jeff Lieberman's art redefines the way people see themselves and their world. Image courtesy of Jeff Lieberman.

Jeff Lieberman is a jack of all science trades, and many non-science trades too, actually.  He is a mechanical engineer, a design consultant, a photographer, composer and kinetic sculptor. He hosts the Discovery Channel’s “Time Warp” TV show, has performed at Carnegie Hall, and gave a TedX talk at Cambridge.  But the common thread that runs through Lieberman’s various endeavors is his use of technology to elicit a sense of wonder.  His science/art combination challenges and shifts human perspectives on the universe (start time 6:05).

Hosts: Breanna Draxler and Beth Bartel
Producer: Breanna Draxler
Engineer: Jim Pullen
Additional contributions: Shelley Schlender and Jim Pullen
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Bees and Pesticides // Radiometers and Weather

Bees and Pesticides (start at 6:40). Two studies published last week in the journal Science (here and here) make a strong case for beekeepers who worry that a new class of pesticides called “neonicotinoids” hurts honeybees and bumblebees.   In recent years, honeybee populations have rapidly declined, in part due to a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Bumblebee populations have been suffering as well. Researchers have proposed many causes for these declines, including pesticides, but it’s been unclear exactly how pesticides cause damage. Both of the new studies looked at the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides, which were introduced in the early 1990s and have now become one of the most widely used crop pesticides in the world. One study, from the United Kingdom, shows that the pesticides reduce a bee’s ability to store enough food and to produce new queens.  In a second study, French researchers tied tiny radios to honeybees then exposed them to low levels of the pesticides; a high number of the bees lost their sense of direction and died away from the hive.  These two new studies add to concerns raised in January by a Purdue University study, which indicated that neonicotinoids persist, as poisons, in both plants and soil for much longer than thought, increasing the chance of the pesticide to harm bees and other insects.  Despite the increasing number of studies calling into question the safety of these pesticides, the EPA has done little to restrict their use.  Local beekeeper Tom Theobald talks with How on Earth’s Shelley Schlender that when it comes to honeybees, these are dangerous pesticides.  You can hear the extended version of this interview on this website.

Radiometers and Weather (start at 12:50). Predicting the weather is a tough job, and climate change is bringing unseasonal conditions that make it even more difficult to predict.  But a monitoring device produced here in Boulder may be able to improve local weather forecasts significnatly.  These radiometers work by creating 3-D profiles of the moisture in the air, which is a key element for meteorologists and climate modelers alike.  They are now being put to various weather-related uses all over the planet.  Stick Ware is the founder and lead scientist of the Boulder-based company, Radiometrics, and he’s here in the studio with us today to give us the scoop on these radiometers.

Hosts: Joel Parker, Breanna Draxler
Producer: Joel Parker
Engineer: Jim Pullen
Headline Contributors: Susan Moran, Jim Pullen
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:14 — 22.2MB)

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