Increasing Organ Donation, Slime Molds and Solar Eclipse

This week: We explore what different countries are doing to reduce the shortage of organs for transplantation. You’ll hear a story about a new Israeli law that’s trying to encourage people to donate their organs. You’ll also hear an interview with a transplant surgeon from Kuwait about the Iranian system of paying living kidney donors. You can ask him your own questions in this week’s Science Forum. And our weekly guest Elsa joins me on the phone with her favorite stories.

Israel’s New Law: There’s a worldwide shortage of organs for transplantation.To tackle that shortage, many countries are experimenting with new strategies. Israel just enacted a new law to try and increase the country’s extremely low rates of organ donation. When its time to receive an organ, a donor gets preference over a non-donor. The law also offers financial incentives to the families of deceased organ donors.
Report by: The World’s Aaron Schachter.
Photo credit for image above: http://www.flickr.com/photos/un_owen/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Should Buying and Selling of Organs be Legalized? Iran has already legalized the buying of kidneys from living donors. Some say the system is unethical and coercive, while others say its a system worth copying perhaps even in the U.S. We speak with Dr. Mustafa Al-Mousawi, the former president of the Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation about how the system’s faring. Dr. Al-Mousawi is also the guest on this week’s Science Forum. So,  you can ask him your own questions. See link below.
Guest: Dr. Mustafa Al-Mousawi.
Join the discussion with Dr. Al-Mousawi on The World Science Forum.

Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories:

• Really Long Eclipse: You may or may not have missed the solar eclipse on January 15. But we tell you why it was so long. It lasted up to 11 minutes and 8 seconds, and was the longest annular eclipse of the millennium.
  See photos of the eclipse from the BBC, National Geographic, and The Guardian.
  Astronomer Jay Pasachoff posted three blog entries and a podcast about the eclipse.
  More eclipse resources from NASA.
• Charcoal for Climate Change? Biochar—a form of charcoal–was a popular fertilizer in the Pre-Columbian Amazon. It has resurfaced in recent years, not only because of its soil-enriching powers, but also because of its potential benefits on climate. You see, making charcoal out of dead plants takes carbon out of circulation—instead of releasing it back into the atmosphere as CO2. But a new study warns that not all biochar is equal: Profitability and climate benefit both depend on what kind of plants are used to make the charcoal.
  The study.
  More about biochar from Nature.
• Single-Celled Engineers: Slime molds connect the dots just as well as engineers do—but without a brain. Japanese researchers studying the molds’ networking process have come up with a mathematical model that described the organism’s decision making process. The formula could help engineers create self-organizing communication networks.
  The study.
  Read a Smithsonian article about the natural history of slime molds.

  Image: Slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) connects oat flakes overlaid on a map of Tokyo (left). Slime mold networks (top right) often resembled the layout of the real Tokyo rail system (bottom right). Courtesy of Science/AAAS.

Music in Science: Sorry guys! This segment will return next week.

Tags: biochar, Iran, Israel, Kuwait, organ donation, organ transplant, slime mold, solar eclipse