Kgnu - How On Earth

Boulder, Colorado has a rich culture of science, as the home for serveral prestigious national laboratories, a thriving technology industry, the flagship campus of the University of Colorado and various joint ventures between them.  As a science enthusiast, where might you go to find a community of like minded people? Must you work in a lab? Teach at a university? Enroll as a student?   Well now Boulder has Science On Tap, a monthly opportunity for science enthusiasts and beer lovers to come together and discover the latest and greatest research in science and technology that is happening along the Front Range.  With us in the studio is Chelsea Thompson who was instrumental in bringing Science On Tap to Boulder. Hosts: Chip Grandits, Joel Parker Producer: Chip Grandits Engineer: Joel Parker Executive Producer: Susan Moran Listen to the show:

Roger the Fragrance Free Barber (Starts 3:25)   Artificial fragrances in shampoos, colognes, lotions. deodorant, laundry detergent and more nearly led Roger the Barber, to give up his profession, due to his chemical sensitivities.  Then he opened his own, fragrance free, shop.  He caters to clients who prefer a fragrance free environment . . . and educates people about what fragrance free means.   Shelly Miller - Clean Indoor Air - (Starts 10:35)  CU Boulder Professor Shelly Miller warns that ingredients in common consumer products sometimes add hazardous chemicals to indoor air.  Miller discusses CU Boulder's Fragrant Free Initiative and the six classes of chemicals that can be hazardous, whether they're fragrant or odorless, including fire retardants in clothes and furniture. Host/Producer: Shelley Schlender Engineer:Maeve Conran Additional Contributions: Beth Bennett Executive Producer: Susan Moran Listen to the show:

This week on How on Earth, Beth interviews Pete Brown, author of Miracle Brew, the story of how beer is made of 4 seemingly simple components, but really from an amazing complexity of science and art. The New York Times recently reviewed Miracle Brew. Here’s what they said: A magisterial tour of fearsome science and vast brewery history leavened with cheery anecdotes, humor, vivid you-are-there prose and a clever eye for personality . . . His rhapsodies about the meaning of life and the meaning of beer are stirring. . . .His expertise and insight will leave you with a glimmer of infinity every time you hold a bottle of it in your hand. Hosts: Beth Bennett, Susan Moran Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Maeve Conran Additional Contributions: Susan Moran Executive Producer: Susan Moran Listen to the show:

For this end-of-the-year/start-of-the-year  How on Earth show, we look back to 2017 with clips from some of our features from the past year: selections about tracking methane leaks, ketogenic diets, using MDMA to treat PTSD, gravitational waves, the solar eclipse, space missions, and the politicization of science.  Those are just a few of the topics we covered in 2017, which also included: the continuation of the Our Microbes, Ourselves series, global warming and climate change, research about aging, mutant proteins, how humans have altered nature, future technologies, nuclear tests and the Van Allen belts, biofuels, extinctions following an asteroid impact, monorails, life expectancy in America,  observing stellar occultations by objects in the distant solar system, space shields for satellites, virtual colonoscopies, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), chronic fatigue syndrome, protecting pollinators, testing our drinking water, cancer, the Long Now foundation, citizen science, fracking, an

This week on How on Earth, Beth finishes the interview with Miriam Kalamian, author of Keto for Cancer. This encyclopedic volume lays out the groundwork for using a ketogenic diet to treat cancer. But, as the author points out, the diet, which starves cancer cells, should be used in conjunction with other therapies. To see the book, go to https://www.chelseagreen.com/keto-for-cancer; to see Miriam's website go to https://www.dietarytherapies.com/ Hosts: Beth Bennett & Chip Grandits Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Chip Grandits Additional contributions: Joel Parker Executive Producer: Beth Bennett Listen to the show:

Healthy . . . But Missing Gut Microbes (Starts 3:25) Practically everyone on the planet now knows that animals have microbes in their guts. This is a new field of exploration, and top researchers emphasize that we need to learn much more before making any blanket statements about the total effect of the gut microbiome.  Nevertheless, it’s become politically correct to advocate specific diets to eat, for the sake of healthy gut microbes, and to assume that all animals “need” gut microbes. That’s one reason the research from CU-Boulder evolutionary biologist Toby Hammer is so fascinating.  Hammer has discovered a number of animals that probably don’t need microbes in their guts - ranging from some insects to some animals as large as, well, a panda bear.  It all began with Hammer's research into caterpillars . . .  Host: Chip Grandits Producer: Shelley Schlender Engineer: Chip Grandits Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

This week on How on Earth, we started speaking with Miriam Kalamian, author of the newly released Keto for Cancer. The interview starts at 11' 30", but unfortunately we lost the connection after only 5 minutes. You can link to her book at http://www.chelseagreen.com/keto-for-cancer and we will have her back to hear the full story! For the remainder of the show we linked to the BBC Science in Action segment on building proteins from novel DNA sequences. Hosts: Beth Bennett and Chip Grandis Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Maeve Conran Executive Producer: Beth Bennett Listen to the show:

The Unnatural World (start time: 6:58): It's an audacious topic for a book: the planet, and audacious individuals who are working to save -- actually, to remake --- human civilization and our home on Earth. David Biello is the science curator at TED and a contributing editor at Scientific American. His debut book, The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age (Scribner), will be out in paperback next month. It explores how we have altered "nature" in so many ways, from burning fossil fuels and warming the oceans and atmosphere, to tearing down tropical rain forests, to killing off so many species. In this newest epoch, dubbed by many the Anthropocene, humans are not just messing things up; they are also inventing solutions, as Biello notes. Daring optimists in his book include Elon Musk and his Tesla electric cars and trucks. Hosts: Chip Grantis, Susan Moran Producer: Susan Moran Engineer: Chip Grantis Executive Producer: Beth Bennett Additional Contributions: Joel Parker Listen

Lancet Countdown on Climate Change (starts 3:45) Respectable science journals no longer debate whether human activity causes climate change, or even if it can be reversed to prevent human suffering.  They now scramble to figure out what will be the cost and who will pay.  The bill will be payable in lost lives and livelihoods.  The British Medical Journal, The Lancet has assembled an interdisciplinary team of scientists to help tally this enormous global bill.  On October 30th they released their 2017 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.  The report concludes that the delayed response to climate change over the past 25 years has already jeopardized human lives and livelihoods, and the impacts must be assessed in terms of global public health.  One of the contributors to that report is local climate scientist, Max Boykoff, a fellow at CIRES in Boulder, where he directs the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research.   Hosts: Shelley Schlender and Chip Grandits Producer: Shelley Schlender and

This week on How on Earth, Beth interviews Sy Montgomery and Liz Thomas, co-authors of Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind: Some amazing stories of their experiences with animals throughout the animal kingdom, ranging from domestic animals (chickens are smarter than we thought!) to wild animals to invertebrates. the 2-3 page format of their book makes for easy reading! See their book at http://www.chelseagreen.com/tamed-and-untamed Host: Beth Bennett Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Maeve Conran Additional Contributions: Joel Parker Executive Producer:Beth Bennett Listen to the show:

Mutant Proteins and Protein Evolution (starts 4:42) CU School of Medicine professor David Pollock explains why he has devised a new way to identify and predict both the evolution of proteins and disease causing protein mutations.    Pollock's highly technical model uses an analogy about a physical model called the Stokes Shift to help explain the biochemical properties of how proteins change, for better or worse.  Pollock's study has just been published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.  Its title is “Sequence entropy of folding and the absolute rate of amino acid substitutions.”  Additionally, he has written a "behind the paper" explanation for a more general audience to explain the concepts being explored in his ground-breaking research. Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything (starts 15:00) Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is an adjunct assistant professor in the BioSciences Department at Rice University. She specializes in the study of parasites.  But her curiosity has ta

In 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, agreeing to not test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space.  France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and the last atmospheric test was done by China on October 16, 1980. Over 500 atmospheric nuclear tests have been performed before then, but none since. That could soon change.  North Korea has threatened to do an atmospheric nuclear test.  Even if that test doesn't lead to a chain of more dangerous events, and considering the potential health impacts of the dispersed radiation, it turns out that simply testing a missile in the atmosphere could lead to highly charged electrons that would tend to fry the electronics of Earth-orbiting satellites. It’s a complex issue, and one that ties in with the huge magnetic fields that protect the Earth and the satellites orbiting around it.  Those magnetic fields include some areas that attract highly charged particles, called the Van All

This week on How on Earth, Beth interviews Dr Martin Blaser of New York University who challenges the assumption that antibiotics are harmless drugs targeting only harmful pathogens. In his recent book, Missing Microbes, Blaser presents the evidence that antibiotics are causing the extinction of important bacteria in our microbiome. These microbes have co-evolved with us, so losing them puts us at risk of many of the rising diseases of our society: asthma, allergies, eczema and obesity. Check out his book: https://books.google.com/books/about/Missing_Microbes.html?id=RJucAwAAQBAJ Host: Beth Bennett Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Maeve Conran Executive Producer: Beth Bennett Listen to the show:

Much of current climate science research focuses on understanding how the climate is changing and what type of climate we will have in the near future. But to understand where the climate is going, we need to understand where the climate has been. It is especially important to understand how the climate has responded to the rise of the modern, industrial world, which has emitted greenhouse gases that warm the climate. Because many of these gases will last for a long time in the atmosphere, some of this warming has already been set in motion and will happen regardless of future greenhouse gas emissions. This change is known as “committed warming”. Determining how much committed warming has occurred in the climate is important to understand the future path of our climate. How on Earth speaks with Dr. Robert Pincus, a co-author of a new study published in Nature Climate Change that provides an estimate of committed warming using a global database of surface temperatures. Dr. Pincus is a Research Scientist at th

The Cassini mission to Saturn launched 20 years ago, on October 15, 1997.  It took seven years to reach Saturn, and has been orbiting and intensely studying Saturn ever since...until last week when the mission ended in a final dive into Saturn’s atmosphere.  The mission studied Saturn, its famous rings, and its many moons using a suite of instruments that observed a broad range of wavelengths from ultraviolet, to visible, infrared, and radio as well as examining dust, charged particles, and magnetic fields.  It also delivered the Huygens probe that descended through the atmosphere of Saturn's giant moon, Titan. In this edition of How on earth, we have two scientists from the Cassini mission team.  Dr. Larry Esposito is a Professor at the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences department at the University of Colorado at Boulder and member of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU.  Dr. Carly Howett is a planetary scientist and manager at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.  They share w

This week on How on Earth we speak with Simon Melov, a biochemist at the Buck Institute for Aging. Dr Melov studies various aspects of aging in worms, mice and humans. The aging field is replete with new and exciting discoveries and Simon’s work epitomizes that. Hosts:Beth Bennett and Chip Grandis Producer:Beth Bennett Engineer:Maeve Conran Additional Contributions:Joel Parker Executive Producer:Alejandro Soto Listen to the show:

Biofuels Tradeoffs (start time: 8:27): In this week's show David DeGennaro, an agriculture policy specialist with the National Wildlife Federation and author of a report called "Fueling Destruction,"  talks with host Susan Moran about the environmental consequences of biofuels, and about possible solutions. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed maintaining record support for biofuels, namely corn. Last week the EPA ended an open public comment period leading up to a decision to maintain, increase or scale back its current support of biofuels as part of the Renewable Fuels Standard, a federal mandate to blend corn-based ethanol and other renewable fuels into conventional gasoline. NWF and some other environmental organizations, along with former California Congressman Henry Waxman, have been urging the EPA and Congress to reduce biofuels mandates. Increased demand for corn has led to the conversion of millions of acres of habitat-rich grasslands and into croplands -- all without significantly reduci

Climate Change and Extinctions Following an Asteroid Impact (starts at 8:45) It has been hypothesized that the dinosaurs were killed off by a large asteroid that struck the Earth. The details of how the impact of a 10 kilometer diameter asteroid led to global scale extinction have remained elusive. Recently, climate researchers from the Boulder area published new climate model results that show how the asteroid impact ultimately leads to widespread cooling in the atmosphere and increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation. These drastic and rapid changes to the climate due to the asteroid impact may explain the global scale extinction. Two of the authors join us today to talk about this new research. Dr. Charles Bardeen works as a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and is the lead author of the new paper. Joining Dr. Bardeen is Professor Brian Toon, a co-author of the new research and a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Hosts: Alejandro Soto & Joel Parker Producer and 

Sustainable Transportation is a major issue for the front range.  In that field a hot topic is PRT, which stands for Personal Rapid Transit system, a radical vision for creating a sustainable infrastructure to get us from point A to point B.  How on Earth interviews Dr. R. Paul Williamson about his proposal for an Elevated High-Speed MagLev PRT system from Boulder to Longmont to Firestone.  How practical is it? Headlines on Tissue Nanotransfection or TNT from Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center seem more like science fiction than science, they are looking to try it on humans next year. If you were up in Wyoming filming the eclipse did your picture get photo-bombed by the International Space Station like this? Host: Chip Grandits Producer: Chip Grandits Engineer: Maeve Conran Executive Producer: Alejandro Soto Listen to the show:

This week on How on Earth, Beth spoke with Dr Gordon Lithgow, a researcher at the Buck Institute for Aging in California who studies aging in nematode worms. Stress actually keeps us young by activating systems that repair and maintain cells. These stresses can be things like caloric restriction and exercise. Eventually the molecular bases of these stresses will be identified and may lead to interventions to slow aging. Hosts: Beth Bennett & Joel Parker Producer: Beth Bennett Engineer: Joel Parker Additional Contributions: Beth Bennett Executive Producer: Alejandro Soto Listen to the show: