Radio Show

Sharman Apt Russell - Author of Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist

[J  ] I’m ___JOEL PARKER____  And This is How On Earth for Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

[J  ] Coming Up: School of Global Environmental Sustainability


[J  ] 2: We begin with a look at some of the recent news in science.  

STORY 1:
Even though it’s far out in space, we’re now getting incredibly detailed pictures of the surface of Mars, including patch of shiny material visible beneath NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander dubbed "Snow Queen."  And just last week, the space agency announced that the Snow Queen patch now includes visible cracks up to about four inches in length, a pebble less than one third inch in size, and a subtle change in the surface's smooth texture—none of which were seen during the first 20 sols, that is, Martian days, of the mission.  Phoenix Lander co-investigator is Mike Mellon of the University of Colorado at Boulder. He and others speculate that the cracks could have formed from repeated expansion and contraction of the surface, or that the exposed layer simply shrank and cracked, or that sublimating ice slowly revealed cracks underneath. The small pebble might have broken free of the surface or fallen from somewhere else, he said. Whatever caused them, they indicate that the Mars landscape does change.  So . . . stay tuned for further changes.

STORY 2:
Speaking of changes, how long did it take for the universe’s first protostars—that’s a massive gaseous blob you might call a pre-star “baby”-- to grow big enough and dense enough to make atoms more complicated than hydrogen?  – you know, the “good stuff” we need such as oxygen, iron, carbon, things like that.  According to a new computer simulation it does not take long at all, astronomically speaking.  This new research suggests that protostars grew into hot, massive stars big sooner after the Big Bang than previously thought.  This new look at the ancient universe has been developed by Naoki Yoshida and colleagues at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and at Harvard.  It helps us understand how pre-stellar gases would have evolved under the simpler physics of the early universe to form a protostar. This new simulation shows that a protostar with a mass of only about 1 percent the mass of our Sun would likely evolve into a hot, massive star 100 times the mass of our Sun in just about 10,000 years, which is a blink of an eye relative to the 13 billion year age of the universe.  The resulting massive star would have been primarily hydrogen and helium, more so than later generation massive stars such as those that exist today, and those first generation stars would have been much more luminous and have shorter lifetimes than their present-day counterparts.  Understanding how these first primordial stars formed and evolved is important because their eventual deaths via supernova explosions created and dispersed the seeds, the chemical building blocks, for subsequent stars, planets – and us – to come into being.

[from "Protostar Formation in the Early Universe," by N. Yoshida  et al.]




STORY 3:
While some alternative health clinics have decades of experience in treating cancer with high levels of injected vitamin C, the technique has been viewed as quack science by the medical community.  Now, researchers at the National Institutes of Health say, maybe not.  They have found that high levels of injected vitamin C halve the rate of tumor growth in mice. Ascorbate, or vitamin C, is usually thought of as an antioxidant, but, when taken orally, the body keeps a tight lid on its concentration in the blood. However, Mark Levine and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health have now shown that when Vitamin C is injected, instead of swallowed, levels in the bloodstream are higher. The elevated amounts of ascorbate then generate hydrogen peroxide, which can slow tumor growth in a mouse model. The authors pursued the research despite earlier studies showing that orally administered ascorbate had no effect on cancer. In the current research, the researchers first showed that ascorbate was lethal to cancer cells in the lab at levels that are nontoxic to normal cells. They then demonstrated ascorbate's protective effects in a mouse model of cancer after giving the animals hefty daily doses of injected ascorbate. The authors report that the treatment slowed tumor growth by around 50 percent in mice. Their clinical investigation revealed that plasma levels of ascorbate achieved in human patients were similar to those achieved in the mice, suggesting that the technique may prove to be a useful chemotherapy component, though the longterm success rate of this technique in humans is not fully documented.

[ “Pharmacologic doses of ascorbate act as a prooxidant and decrease growth of aggressive tumor xenografts in mice,” by Chen et al.]


MUSIC BREAK


FEATURE 1
HOST INTRO for Diana Wall interview (for HOE August 5, 2008)
(Note: the audio file is in the Volunteer Green –I think – folder, under “Moran.”)

INTRO
Call it the latest push to make Colorado a breeding ground for “green” engineers, entrepreneurs, and even English majors.  Colorado State University has launched a School of Global Environmental Sustainability. The school aims to infuse environmental awareness and know-how into just about every research and teaching area.  Diana Wall, a biology professor and director of CSU’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, will head up the new school. She speaks now with How On Earth’s Susan Moran about the school’s mission in these times of daunting environmental and climate change-related challenges.

[recorded feature]

OUTRO:
Thanks to Susan for that report.  You can find out more about the new school at CSU by Googling “School of global Environmental Sustainability.”

FEATURE 2
“Everything is connected, and the web is holy.” So wrote Rome’s Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius.  That observation is the starting point of Sharman (SHAR-man) Russell’s new book about her life as a pantheist.  Russell is an environmental journalist.  In her new memoir, she explains how she blends her environmental perspective with what may be the world’s most simple and inclusive religious philosophy.  It’s pantheism.  Up next, How on Earth’s Shelley Schlender talks with Sharman, beginning with Sharman reading from her book:

FEATURE

Thanks to Shelley for that report.  Sharman Russell’s new book is, Standing in the Light.


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That’s all for this edition of How on Earth.

Tim Morton wrote our theme music.  Tom Wasinger produced it.  Additional Music by

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Our website is H-O-E dot K-G-N-U dot NET. You can also find it through the main K-G-N-U dot ORG  website.  Questions or comments?  Call the KGNU comment line at (303)-447-9911.  For How on Earth, the KGNU Science show, I’m _____________________


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