In all the talk about electric vehicles and hybrids, I was starting to wonder about hydrogen-powered cars. Well, it turns out that Britain just got its first public hydrogen filling station. Now…I guess they just need some hydrogen powered cars to stop by. In this episode of WTP, you’ll hear from one person who thinks hydrogen power can play an important role in weaning ourselves off of gas-powered vehicles, and also from a skeptic who says the tech (not to mention people’s will to switch) is just not there yet.

Also in this episode: India’s $35 tablet computer (yes, that’s with a government subsidy), the Chinese and conflict minerals in Congo, and Israel tries to embrace solar power.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

This week: A new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists provides new, higher numbers for radiation caused cancer deaths around Chernobyl. Brazil lures back Brazilian scientists working in the U.S. Court rulings may be influenced by whether or not judges are hungry, according to a new study.

Chernobyl Cancer Study Surpasses U.N. Estimates: Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with physicist Lisbeth Gronlund of the Union of Concerned Scientists about her new study on the likely number of cancer deaths caused by Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
Dr. Gronlund’s study.
The Chernobyl body count controversy.
Remembering Chernobyl after 25 years.
Click here to read a discussion about Gronlund’s analysis. (go to the bottom of the page in the comments section)

Brazil’s Investment in Science & Tech: Brazil wants to compete with the US in the fields of science and technology. The country has dramatically boosted investment in research and has begun to lure home Brazilian-born scientists who have been working abroad. Solana Pyne reports from Rio de Janeiro.
Reporter: Solana Pyne.
Read the story here.

Hunger Affects Court Rulings: Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Columbia Business School professor Jonathan Levav about his new study, “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions,” which suggests that factors such as whether or not a judge is hungry affect court rulings.
Read the interview transcript here.

Tetris, as many of you probably know, can be completely addictive. There’s just something about stacking all those shapes in nice even rows. And in recent years, we’ve been told that researchers think Tetris may be more than just an excellent time-killer. Well, now there’s a new study from Oxford University that shows Tetris may help reduce trauma. From the BBC: “Volunteers were exposed to distressing images, with some given the game to play 30 minutes later, the PLoS One journal reported. Players had fewer “flashbacks”, perhaps because it helped disrupt the laying down of memories, said the scientists. It is hoped the study could aid the development of new strategies for minimising the impact of trauma.” In this week’s WTP, We’ll hear more from Dr. Emily Holmes, one of the researchers who worked on the study.

Also in this episode, we’ll take a look at one of the latest ways the open-source mapping and texting platform, Ushahidi, is being used. In Cairo, Harassmap is using it to document cases of sexual harassment of Egyptian women.

Then, we’ll hear about about another mapping project called Facts on the Ground, a web and iPhone app that will give you the latest information on Israeli settlement activity collected by Americans for Peace Now.

And we’ll end the podcast with one of our favorite topics: the use of technology in classroom learning. This time, we travel to South Africa to hear about how cell phones are being used to help local students. Here’s the promised video:

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Listen to our interview with science historian Oren Harman. He’s our guest in this Science Forum discussion.

Harman is a professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel.

If evolution favors the survival of the fittest, how did kindness and selflessness evolve?  The search for that answer is the subject of Harman’s new book, The Price of Altruism.

It tells the story of George Price, a scientist who developed an equation that explains how natural selection can favor altruistic behaviors.
As Harman writes, George Price’s life and work were full of contradictions.

Disappointed by his findings, because they implied that seemingly selfless behaviors are in fact selfish, Price decided to prove his own science wrong. He became an evangelical Christian and gave away everything he owned to the poor and homeless.

Price took his own life in 1975.

Oren Harman is taking your comments and questions. Come join the conversation. It’s just to the right.

• What tells us more about human kindness: Price’s altruism for the poor, or his mathematical equation?
• Do you believe any actions are truly selfless, or do all acts of kindness have ulterior motives?
• What drives you to be kind to others?

Additional Resources:

• Watch ‘The Bipolar Ape: Torn Between Love and War’, a movie about human nature.
• Squirrels adopt orphaned baby squirrels.

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.

In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people are waiting for new hearts, lungs and kidneys. Many of these patients will die waiting.

Frustrated, some patients turn to a global black market in organs.

To tackle the organ shortage, countries are experimenting with various strategies.

Israel just enacted a new law to boost the number of donors.  The law favors donors over non-donors when it comes to receiving an organ. And some Americans are pushing a controversial solution – legalizing the buying and selling of organs.

Iran is already doing that. The Iranian government gives every kidney donor $1200 and one year of free health care. This system has increased the availability of organs, but at what price?

[player] Download MP3
Listen to a story about Israel’s new law and the interview and our interview with Dr. Al-Mousawi. He’s a transplant surgeon and past president of the Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation. He is also the guest in this Science Forum discussion.

He argues that the Iranian system may have reduced the organ shortage, but it is unfair to the donors, who are often poor and underprivileged.

Now it’s your chance to ask Dr. Al-Mousawi your own questions. Join our discussion.

• Have you signed an organ donor card? If not, what kind of incentive would make you do it?
• Are you in favor of a legalized market for organs? Do you think a regulated system will prevent transplant tourism and a black market for organs?

A Cambodian Lake at Risk: Even places with a relative abundance of water are experiencing problems. Cambodia is a good example. Most Cambodians depend on fish for protein. And most of that fish comes not from the ocean but from a huge inland lake called the Tonle Sap — the largest lake in Southeast Asia. The Tonle Sap ecosystem has been battered by dams, logging and other development.
Report: By the World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Cambodia.

Drought and Conflict: In the Middle East, water has long been a source of conflict. A long drought — and the threat of even less rain in years to come — is raising fears of worse times ahead. Linda Gradstein has two stories from Israel and the West Bank on the growing impact of the region’s water crisis.
Report #1: Conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over water.
Report #2: Some non-governmental organizations on both sides, such as Friends of the Earth Middle East and the Arava Institute, are trying to work together on the problem.

Water and Climate Change: Water issues are increasingly intertwined with climate change.
Guest: Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.

Potential Solutions:

• Designing Water’s Future. Finalists of the 2008-2009 Aspen Design Challenge.
• Desalination: A National Perspective. A free e-book published by the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Advancing Desalination Technology (2008).
• Desalination: Option or Distraction for a Thirsty World? Another take on desalination, from the World Wildlife Fund (2007).
• Local Solutions to the Global Water Crisis. Article featuring several projects of the International Development Research Centre.
• A Sustainable Vision for Water in the Twenty-First Century. Audio and transcript of a 2008 lecture by Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.
• Solutions for a Water-Short World. A thorough, if somewhat dated (1998) overview, published by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
• Our Water, Our Waste, Our Town. Case studies and manual for reforming urban water and sanitation facilities. From the international charity WaterAid.
• The UN-Habitat Best Practises Database includes several creative local responses to the water crisis — such as how the Spanish city of Zaragoza cut its water use to one third of the national average.

Music:
Bring Me Some Water, by Melissa Etheridge
You Don’t Miss Your Water, by Otis Redding