How On Earth

Rosetta // Autism & the Microbiome

We talk with Joel Parker about his Denver Science Museum presentation. Joel is a project leader for one of the scientific instruments on board the Rosetta space mission. We also discuss new findings about how improving the health of the human digestive tract, with the use of beneficial microbes, might improve mood disorders, including reducing the anxiety that’s common with autism.

Producer: Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:00 — 22.0MB)

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Earth-friendly Landscaping

Summer is a time to celebrate our bursting gardens. But you may be wondering why your neighbor’s garden seems to be attracting all the butterflies, honeybees and hummingbirds, while yours seems to be attracting mostly aphids and raccoons. Our guest, Alison Peck, owner of Matrix Gardens in Boulder, talks with How On Earth host Susan Moran about how we make our gardens beautiful, biologically diverse, homes for native wildlife. She’s a landscape designer specializing in xeriscape, native plant and other earth-friendly landscapes.
Some resources for gardening for wildlife:
* Xeres Society’s pollinator resource guide.
* Xeres Society’s book, Attracting Native Pollinators.
* Bio-Integral Resource Center, Berkeley, Calif.
* National Wildlife Federation’s “Garden for Wildlife” Program.

Hosts: Susan Moran and Joel Parker
Additional Contributions: Kendra Krueger
Producer, Engineer, Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:41 — 22.6MB)

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The Oso Landslide

Jim Pullen speaks with Dr. David Montgomery, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington about the landslide that buried Oso, Washington, in March 2014.

Host: Kendra Krueger
Producer: Jim Pullen
Engineer: Maeve Conran
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:27 — 21.5MB)

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The Ocean Is Us #2 : Endocrine Disruptors in Drinking Water

IMGP0185 — Dr. Alan Vajda (CU Denver) and Dr. David Norris (CU Boulder) dissecting fish from Boulder Creek to evaluate effects of wastewater effluent exposure.
Photo courtesy Alan Vajda

Endocrine Disruptors and Drinking Water (starts at 3:12) Today we continue our series called The Ocean is Us, which explores our vital connection to the oceans. Alan Vajda, an environmental endocrinologist at the University of Colorado Denver, talks with How On Earth’s Susan Moran about a rare success story: why fish in Boulder Creek are acting and looking more sexually normal. We also explore broader water-quality issues in Colorado and beyond, and the implications for human health. For more information on studies conducted by CU and USGS scientists on endocrine disruptors related to Boulder Creek, South Platte River and elsewhere, visit BASIN. Check our website for the previous interview in the “The Ocean is Us” series, on Teens4Oceans. And check out KGNU’s year-long series on Colorado water issues. It’s called Connecting the Drops. It’s at kgnu.org and yourwatercolorado.org. To learn more or become active in preserving our watershed and the oceans, go to Colorado Ocean Coalition.

All features in The Ocean Is Us series can be found here.

Hosts: Susan Moran, Kendra Krueger
Producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Maeve Conran
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:44 — 20.8MB)

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Astronomy Through the Ages

640px-Tycho-Brahe-Mural-Quadrant — Tycho Brahe’s observatory at Uranienborg (Wikimedia Commons)

Astronomy Through the Ages (starts at 4:10): If I ask you to close your eyes and imagine an astronomer, what do you see? Maybe you think of a lone figure hunched all night over the eyepiece of a telescope in a big, domed observatory. Maybe you think of Jodie Foster, as Ellie Arroway in the movie Contact, wearing headphones to listen in on cosmic radio waves at Arecibo.

My mind always wanders back to a woodcut of Tycho Brahe’s 16th-century observatory, filled with intricate equipment for making naked-eye observations of the night sky.

But do any of these ingenious images actually resemble the life of an astronomer today? And how are new technologies and “big data” changing the way we study stars today and in years to come?

To discuss those questions, we’re joined in our Boulder studio by Dr. John Bally, a professor of astronomy at the University of Colorado, and Dr. Seth Hornstein, director of the Sommers-Bausch Observatory on the CU campus.

Hosts: Shelley Schlender, Ted Burnham
Producer: Ted Burnham
Engineer: Shelley Schlender
Additional Contributions: Jane Palmer
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:31 — 22.4MB)

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The Ocean Is Us #1 : Teens4Oceans – Marine Science Education

high school students measuring a juvenile green sea turtle off of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands
*Photo courtesy of Mikki McComb-Kobza*

Teens4Oceans (starts at 9:15): Today, we’re kicking off a series of interviews on the show called The Ocean Is Us. We’ll explore how all of us living in land-locked Colorado are connected to the ocean — whether it’s through our watershed that flows into the Gulf of Mexico, or the fish we buy at the grocery store, or the carbon dioxide we emit that acidifies the oceans. Teens4Oceans is a nonprofit organization based in Colorado that is inspiring teenagers nationwide to become passionate ocean lovers and scientists through experiential learning — doing real marine research in the field.

How On Earth’s Susan Moran interviews Mikki McComb-Kobza, a marine biologist and executive director of Teens4Oceans, and Shelby Austin, who recently graduated from Ralston Valley High School in Arvada. For more information on our inland connection to the ocean and you can get involved, visit Colorado Ocean Coalition. And check out KGNUs year-long series, called Connecting the Drops, on Colorado water issues, at kgnu.org and yourwatercolorado.org.

All features in The Ocean Is Us series can be found here.

Hosts: Susan Moran and Joel Parker
Producer: Kendra Krueger
Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:38 — 21.6MB)

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Caffeine and Athletics

Caffeine and Athletics (starts at 4:35): Chances are you’ve already had a cup of coffee this morning or, if you are like me, it was a cup of tea. Or maybe, if you are truly hedonistic, you started the day with a bar of chocolate. Either way, if any of these options are part of your daily routine you’d be one of the 90 percent of people in this country that regularly consumes caffeine, America’s drug of choice.

In this week’s show we talk to Murray Carpenter, author of the book Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts and Hooks Us. Although he covers the history and culture of caffeine in his book, he is specifically going to be talking about the science of caffeine and how this powerful drug affects our cognition and physical health. In particular, for all you runners, cyclists and swimmers out there – there maybe a few of you in Boulder – he’s going to discuss how the right dose of caffeine can help an athlete’s performance. Apparently, for you runners who can run a 40-minute 10K without caffeine, ingesting the drug can help knock 72 seconds off your time. That would put you at least 100 places higher in the Bolder Boulder.

Hosts: Jane Palmer and Ted Burnham
Producers: Jane Palmer and Ted Burnham
Engineer: Ted Burnham
Additional Contributions: Beth Bennett
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:09 — 21.2MB)

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Hope On Earth

Hope On Earth (starts 7:08): Few people have thought as critically and deeply about the state of Earth and our role on it than Paul Ehrlich. Over the course of several decades, the Stanford University biologist and ecologist has written many books, including 1968’s controversial The Population Bomb, in which he predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s due to overpopulation and limited resources.

He has just come out with a new book, which he co-wrote with Michael Charles Tobias, an ecologist, filmmaker, book author and animal rights advocate. The book is called Hope On Earth: A Conversation. And indeed, it is a conversation between Ehrlich and Tobias. In fact, their conversation –many of them — took place here in a research outpost just outside of Crested Butte.

Both men join us by phone to discuss the book and the most pressing environmental issues of the day that it explores.

Producer: Ted Burnham
Co-Hosts: Ted Burnham, Susan Moran
Engineer: Ted Burnham
Executive Producer: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:11 — 34.6MB)

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Wireless Dawn or Electronic Silent Spring?

Mybroadband Radiation Brain Cellphone - courtesy Wiki — Brain Radiation from a Cellphone courtesy wiki/my broadband

(1:00) Cell Phone Radiation – Headphones please? Chris Farnsworth uses a microwave meter to measure cell phone radiation, to urges people to at least use headphones with a mobile phone.

(7:50) CU Engineering Emeritus Professor Frank Barnes talks with Katie Singer, author of An Electronic Silent Spring. We also offer an extended interview.

Producer, Engineer, Host: Shelley Schlender

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:34 — 23.4MB)

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Massive Stars

Massive stars (start time 6:45) Dr. Emily Levesque is an astronomer who studies big stars, distant stars, exploding stars, and truly weird stars called Thorne–Żytkow objects. All of these topics relate to massive stars – stars that are more than eight time more massive than our Sun. Dr. Levesque is a postdoctoral Hubble fellowship and Einstein fellowship researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received a physics degree from MIT, and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Hawaii, which resulted in the Astronomical Society of the Pacific awarding her the Robert J. Trumpler award for outstanding PhD thesis, and this year she was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon award by the American Astronomical Society for her work studying gamma-ray bursts. Dr. Levesque, is here in the studio with us today to talk about her favorite weird astrophysical phenomena and the life of an observational astronomer.

Producer, Engineer, Host: Joel Parker

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:45 — 22.7MB)

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