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Past Shows
May 8, 2004
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Luna the Whale
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Luna the Whale |
Luna is a four-year-old male killer whale who's been living in Nootka Sound off the west coast of Vancouver Island for the past three years. But, cute as it may look when he's getting cuddly with the local fishing boats, it's not safe, and his charms are starting to wear thin on local residents.
Marilyn Joyce is the marine mammal coordinator for Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Vancouver. She and fellow whale researchers are planning to pluck Luna out of Nootka Sound, transport him to the southern end of the island where his pod has been known to swim and then release him. Luna might swim right back to Nootka Sound, but the researchers are outfitting him with a radio transmitter and they hope he'll go with his pod and eventually help uncover one of the greatest mysteries of the killer whale: no one knows where they go in the winter.
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Plastic Forever
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Plastic is here to stay |
Plastic is one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, and its impact will last forever. Literally. Even if it's only used once, plastic is made to last. And it's beginning to pile up, in landfills and in nature. But aside from the large, unsightly pieces of plastic litter, scientists in England have found that there are also lots of microscopic pieces that we can't see. Dr. Richard Thompson is a senior lecturer at the University of Plymouth. He and his team studied sediment samples from beaches across the UK and they found plastic particles almost everywhere. The next step of their research is to find out what impact these particles have on the ecosystem.
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Take two Mummies and Call me in the Morning
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Barbara Anne Carter, a graduate student and teaching associate at the State University of California in Los Angeles studies an area in medical history most would like to forget. Throughout the medieval period in Europe ground up mummies were considered a potent medicine for many ailments, and when the supply of ancient Egyptian mummies ran short, new mummies were "manufactured" from local materials. Ms. Carter thinks this practice might have led to serious oubreaks of disease.
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Moulting Marella
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Marella fossil preserved while molting - Courtesy Dr. D. Garcia-Bellido |
A unique specimen of one of the world's most remarkable fossils has been discovered by Dr. Diego Garcia-Bellido, a post-doctoral researcher at the Royal Ontario Museum. The half-billion-year-old fossil of a creature called Marella was preserved in mid-molt. It was buried just as its soft body was emerging from its old exoskeleton. The fossil is an amazing glimpse of a fascinating period in the history of life on earth.
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Scaling the Sequoias
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Redwood sprigs from 95M up - Courtesy Nature |
The giant Redwoods of the west coast of the United States can reach heights of more than 100 meters. Dr. George Koch, a professor of Biology at the University of Northern Arizona wanted to find out if they could get any taller. He and his colleagues climbed to the top of these remarkable trees and did sophisticated measurements to determine what was limiting their growth. The biggest factor seemed to be the difficulty the trees had in drawing water up to the extreme height of the tallest branches.
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Question of the Week: Sunscreen
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Doni Jacklin sent us this question via email: "How does sunscreen work, and if I apply SPF 15 to my body twice, is it the same as using SPF 30?"
For the answer, we go to Dalhousie University where Dr. Mary Ann White is Director of the Institute for Research in Materials.
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