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.

This week: The simian version of HIV is more lethal than scientists knew. The 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, from a Russian perspective. A Chinese take on the solar eclipse. Plus: a Neanderthal murder mystery, tracking a huge dust storm as it travels the globe, and a close analysis of a click language.

Chimp AIDS: Scientists believe that the human AIDS virus, HIV, evolved from a virus called SIV, which infects monkeys and chimpanzees. Researchers had thought that SIV was relatively harmless, but a new study has found that SIV-infected chimpanzees in Tanzania are dying of an AIDS-like illness. The finding could change approaches to AIDS treatment in people.

Guest: Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Moon Landing: For almost two decades, the U.S. and the Soviet Union raced to be the first to the moon. The race obsessed both countries, and cost tens of billions of dollars (and rubles). Russians therefore have a different perspective than Americans on this 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing.
Report: By Jessica Golloher in Moscow.
Guest: Roald Sagdeev, former director of the Soviet Space Institute.

Solar Eclipse: The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st Century took place this week in Asia. It lasted more than six minutes. In China, the eclipse held deep cultural meaning.

Report: By Bill Marcus in Shanghai.

Elsa’s favorite science stories of the week:

• Scientists implicate an anatomically modern human in a Neanderthal murder attempt. (The study.) Here’s that novel we mentioned on the podcast.
• Researchers track a Chinese dust cloud as it circles the globe. (The study.)
• Linguists unpack the multiplicity of click consonants in an endangered language, N|uu. (The study and the press release.) At this site, you can hear more N|uu words, recorded by linguist Amanda Miller and colleagues.

Music:

• Moonwalk, by Pee Wee Ellis
• Total Eclipse of the Heart, by Bonnie Tyler