LINKSSurviving Galeras
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On January 14, 1993, an international group of scientists was conducting experiments on top of a Colombian volcano named Galeras. Before the end of the day, six of those scientists - and three local tourists - were dead. They had all been inside the volcano’s crater when it suddenly - and violently - erupted.
Among the survivors was Dr. Stanley Williams, a professor of geology at Arizona State University, and the leader of that day’s fatal expedition. The eruption left him with two broken legs, a nearly severed foot, multiple burns, and a life-threatening brain injury. Now Stanley Williams has written a gripping and controversial account of his experience on top of the volcano - along with a fascinating history of volcano lore. It’s called “Surviving Galeras” - and Dr. Williams dropped by our studio to talk about it.
Sometimes life imitates art. One of the classic movie plot lines is the marauders coming into town, taking over and driving out the inhabitants. Well it's not just the stuff of fiction. In Panama there are two species of ants living out this lifestyle. One group are simple farmers, looking after their fungus gardens, the other a group of predators who come in, kick out the farmers, eat all the fungus and move on. Rachelle Adams from the University of Texas, Austin discovered this interesting tale of insect domination.
Producer Jim Lebans tells us about a breakthrough for electronic paper: electronic plastic to go with electronic ink, how humans cooled the climate over the last millenium with deforestation, and a new fossil find that supports the idea that birds really descended from dinosaurs.
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While the Egyptians were building the great pyramid at Giza, people on the other side of the world were building their own kinds of monuments. A paper published this week in Science describes what may be the oldest city in the Americas. The city of Caral in the foothills of the Andes was built more than four thousand years ago. Dr. Jonathan Haas from the Field Museum in Chicago was one of the researchers who established the age of the city.
A few years ago the major hamburger chains gave up using polystyrene containers for holding their food. This was supposed to cut down waste going to landfill sites. But the replacement cardboard doesn't do a very good job of keeping food hot. So Dr. Geoff Nobes, a Canadian scientist working for the United States Department of Agriculture, and his colleagues have come up with another solution. They're using waste wheat products to produce a new kind of foam that they're testing as a food container. It's biodegradable and may even have a higher nutritional content than the food it holds!
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A slippery question this week from B&B owners Alex and Nancy Hollman in Powell River, BC. "If one guest uses a piece of soap, is it safe to leave it for the next guest? Would we have a safer house if we used liquid soap exclusively?"
Dr. Ivan Oresnik, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Manitoba, has our answer this week.
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