Author: Shelley Schlender

Lean Deli Meat vs A Big Fat Steak . . . and Water in Outer Space

We talk with one of the nation’s leading nutrition scientists  . . . whose opinions about food and health might not be popular with the American Salt Institute . . . OR with the USDA.  Dariush Mozaffarian is with the Harvard School of Public Health, in the department of epidemiology.  Current projects include leadership of the Nutrition in Chronic Diseases Expert Group of the Gates Foundation.   He’ll explain data that indicates processed lean turkey meat and processed lean ham are a greater risk factor for diabetes and heart disease than eating an equal size serving of fresh, fat, juicy steak.  Mozaffarian talks with Shelley Schlender.  (and for an extended version of the interview, click here)

And we talk with CU astronomer Jason Glenn.   He’s one of the principal investigators on the Z-Spec telescope, operated out of Hawaii.  Recently, Glenn’s team has discovered an enormous cloud of water hanging in space—12 billion light-years away.  Astronomers have never before found water from that far back into the early universe. Glenn talks about the finding with Ted Burnham.

Also in this week’s show, we talk with Janos Perczel about a new design for an invisibility cloak. (and for an extended version of the interview, click here)

Co-hosts:  Joel Parker and Ted Burnham
Engineer: Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Susan Moran
Producer: Shelley Schlender

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:57 — 34.3MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Janos Perczel – Invisibility Cloak (Extended Version)

This podcast provides extended version of our interview with Janos Perczel about his new Invisibility Cloak.

Background:

An undergraduate  at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland has overcome a major hurdle in the development of invisibility cloaks by envisioning an optical device that would allow the cloak to hide things against CHANGING backgrounds.  The Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics, published the study today, and the lead author, Janos Perczel, spoke with us about it from Hungary, via Skype,.  But first — putting aside Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility for a moment, in real life, scientists have cloaked some palm-sized objects . . . but not especially well.  Here’s Janos Perczel.
Perczel
It depends on what you mean by an invisibility cloak.  The sort of stuff you see in Harry Potter films has never been made yet.  There have been experiments to test the theory but these experiments have always featured invisibility in some reduced form.
So far, cloaking only works when an object’s against one single field of steady background wavelength, like a “blue screen.”  And even that’s complicated. “Cloaking” conceals an object by bending light around it.  Perczel says it’s similar to putting a rock in a river, where the water bends around and covers the rock and makes it “disappear..  But just as water must speed up in order to hurry around the rock, bending light has required accelerating the light.   And super-speeded light flows too fast to allow a cloaking devices to adjust to changing backgrounds.  In the new report, Perczel and colleagues offer a solution.  They call it an invisibility sphere, and it buys enough time for the cloak to adjust to changing backgrounds by, well — what else?  Their device slows down the normal speed of light.

Janos Perczel

Perczel
So that all the light speeds that we use in our cloak will be less than the speed of light, in vacuum, so that the cloak we propose here would work for any frequency and would also work against an ever-changing background and a multiplicity of colors and, well anything.
It may be decades before this technology moves from theory to real world applications.  But Perczel predicts that there will be plenty.
Perczel
I’m not sure I would want to talk about the potential military applications, because that’s not something I’m terribly keen on. But, apart from those, this whole invisibility subject is based on transformation optics.  That’s the key word here, and it tells us how to control light and how to guide it pretty much any way we want to guide it around.  This might lead to the birth of incredible optical devices.  
Perczel envisions images that are sharper than the quality of the light the first hit the lens.  And who knows?  Maybe someday invisibilites cloaks will lead to anti-wrinkle creams and perhaps lower production costs of future Harry Potter movies.  Thanks to Shelley Schlender for doing this report.  You can hear an extended version of the interview, on our website, howonearthradio.org.

 

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:08 — 15.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Harvard Epidemiologist Dariush Mozaffarian on Salt (extended version)

Here’s an extended version of Shelley Schlender’s interview with Dariush Mozaffarian on Salt.  Note that in the interview, Shelley asks Dr. Mozaffarian to comment on some of the assertions made in the popular press, Scientific American story, It’s Time to End the War on Salt.”  The interview mentions a citation in the popular press article about the Cochrane Collaboration’s view on salt.  After the interview, Mozaffarian’s pointed out this more recent assessment from the Cochrane Collaboration:

The most recent on salt and blood pressure is below:
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004;(3):CD004937.
Effect of longer-term modest salt reduction on blood pressure.
He FJ, MacGregor GA.

Here are the verbatim conclusions from that report:
“CONCLUSIONS: Our meta-analysis demonstrates that a modest reduction in salt intake for a duration of 4 or more weeks has a significant and, from a population viewpoint, important effect on blood pressure in both individuals with normal and elevated blood pressure. These results support other evidence suggesting that a modest and long-term reduction in population salt intake could reduce strokes, heart attacks, and heart failure. Furthermore, our meta-analysis demonstrates a correlation between the magnitude of salt reduction and the magnitude of blood pressure reduction. Within the daily intake range of 3 to 12 g/day, the lower the salt intake achieved, the lower the blood pressure.”

Additionally, Mozaffarian suggests that people interested in this topic check out a meta-analysis by the British Journal of Medicine Titled, Salt intake, stroke, and cardiovascular disease: meta- analysis of prospective studies.

Last but not least, for a recent speech by Mozaffarian that provides even more detail on these topics, click here.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:52 — 21.9MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Cell Phone Safety – Extended Version

 

Here is the extended version of the interview with CU Electrical Engineering Professor Frank Barnes about cell phone safety.

 

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:22 — 22.2MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Cavemen Stayed Local while Women Left Home

We talk with Sandi Copeland, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at CU, about this story:

Two million years ago, two-legged apes roamed the African landscape. Many of these ancient hominins,  lived in limestone caves in what is now South Africa. We know this through fossilized skull fragments and teeth from those caves.

But fossils only tell us where an individual died—not where it grew up, or where it traveled during its life. Or do they? New research from the University of Colorado that’s been published in the journal Nature, reveals that male hominins in South Africa grew up in the caves where they died, while the females who died there grew up elsewhere and migrated to the caves as adults.

The research not only sheds light on the behaviors of early human relatives; it makes use of a new technique, pioneered by the CU researchers, to quickly and cheaply analyze the birthplace of fossilized creatures.

Producer: Shelley Schlender
Co-hosts: Joel Parker, Ted Burnham
Engineer: Shelley Schlender

For Headline Features, read on . . .

Continue reading “Cavemen Stayed Local while Women Left Home”

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:37 — 21.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS

The Future of Space Flight: Alan Stern & Elon Musk

We share excerpts from a talk about the Future of Spaceflight, presented at CU-Boulder in April, featuring Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute and Elon Musk of Space X.

Producer: Shelley Schlender
Co-hosts: Joel Parker, Ted Burnham
Engineer: Shelley Schlender

Listen to the show:

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:01 — 22.0MB)

Subscribe: RSS

2011 GoldLab Symposium – Speaker Sessions

Here are audio recordings from the 2011 GoldLab Symposium at CU-Boulder, with both Friday and Saturday sessions.  For power point slides and videos of the session, go to GoldLabColorado.com

FRIDAY – PART 1:  Health and Medical Problems Everywhere

Moderator: Fintan Steele, CIMB at CU, Boulder

 

9 AM:  “Our Dialogue, One Year Later”

Larry Gold –  MCDB, CU and SomaLogic “Our Dialogue, One Year Later”

LISTEN

 

Continue reading “2011 GoldLab Symposium – Speaker Sessions”

Gold Lab Symposium & Fat for Stronger Muscles

We learn about new research that indicates that the combination of exercise plus eating high cholesterol foods may help build lean body mass, even in older adults.

What’s more, eating high cholesterol foods such as cheese, beef fat and eggs, when combined with exercise, also seems more heart safe than most people think, according to new research published by Steve Riechman, in the Journal of Gerontology.

And we talk with Larry Gold, founder of the  Gold Lab Symposium.  The 2011 symposium features scientists, researchers and policy makers discussing how health and science can intersect with healthcare policy, and how to make each one  better.

The 2011 GoldLab Symposium was held at CU-Boulder’s Muenzinger Auditorium May 13 – 14th.  For audio recordings of the sessions, go here.  For videos and powerpoint presentations from the sessions, go to GoldLabColorado.com

Producer: Shelley Schlender
Co-hosts: Joel Parker, Ted Burnham
Engineer: Shelley Schlender

Listen to the show:

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:10 — 22.1MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Moonwalking with Einstein // Pledge Drive Show

In this Spring Pledge Drive Show, we share an update on the crisis in Japan from Kathleen Tierney of CU-Boulder’s Natural Hazards  Center, and then Joel Parker interviews Joshua Foer, author of the runaway bestseller, Moonwalking with Einstein:  The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. (the full interview can be found here)

Hosts: Joel Parker, Ted Burnham, Breanna Draxler, Tom McKinnon, Shelley Schlender

Show Producer:  Joel Parker & Shelley Schlender

Listen to the show:

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:29 — 28.0MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Colorado Growth Model is Replacing CSAPs // Boulder Valley Science Fair

Boulder Math Scores - How they rank statewide (from schoolview.org)

In honor of KGNU’s Kid’s Week, we go to the Boulder County Science Fair with How on Earth’s Tom McKinnon.  In turns out three of the five students Tom interviewed before the judging began ended up as winners at the science show!  Then, we look at CSAPs-Colorado’s Student Assessment Program.  That style of standardized test for Reading, Writing, Math and Science is being phased out, in favor of The Colorado Growth Model that’s so innovative, it’s being adopted in several other states.  How on Earth’s Shelley Schlender interviews cognitive scientist Bill Bonk, who’s on the team developing the Colorado Growth Model, which you can see at schoolview.org.

Hosts: Joel Parker and Tom McKinnon

Producer: Shelley Schlender

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:49 — 27.3MB)

Subscribe: RSS