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Past Shows
January 3,
2004
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Mining Methane
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The results of the largest experment
yet to to explore the buried gas hydrates
in Canada's arctic were announced
recently. The Mallik 2002 drilling
program explored buried deposits of
methane, trapped under high pressure
and low temperature in tiny ice cages.
While we know there's a lot of this
material - perhaps as much as the
entire world's reserves of traditional
fossil fuels - there is also not a
lot known about it. Scott Dallimore,
the lead principal investigator with
the Mallik 2002 Gas Hydrate Well Program,
and a research scientist with the
Geological Survey of Canada, says
their experiments showed that these
deposits may indeed be suitable for
commercial extraction.
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Songbirds and Snowbirds
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An
American Redstart, US Fish &
Wildlife Service |
Every year, thousands of Canadians
head south to warmer climes. And they're
accompanied by millions of songbirds.
For the birds, the journey south allows
them to survive the winter. But some
new research shows there's more to
it than that. The habitat they're
living in has a profound effect on
how well their breeding goes the following
summer. The better the wintering ground,
the more offspring they'll produce.
Dr. Laurene Ratcliffe, a biology
professor from Queen's University
in Kingston, uncovered this relationship.
But she's concerned an increased interest
in these same wintering sites by tourists
could destroy the homes of the songbirds.
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Big, I mean Littlehorn
Sheep
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Bighorn
sheep of Ram Mountain, Alberta |
The Bighorn sheep of Ram Mountain,
Alberta have provided prize trophies
for hunters for many decades. This
hunting, however, seems to have had
an impact on the evolution of the
sheep. Hunters have taken the young
animals with the largest horns, before
they've had the chance to reproduce.
The result is the opposite of natural
selection. The very animals who would
have bred are being removed. The result
is "little horn" sheep, and potentially
a less hardy and healthy population.
Dr. David Coltman,
a Canadian research scientist in the
Department of Animal and Plant Sciences
at the University of Sheffield, discovered
this unnatural selection.
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Funk Island: Great
Auk Graveyard
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Illustration
by Charles Douglas, copyright
Canadian Museum of Nature |
Funk Island is a granite rock in the
middle of the northwest Atlantic Ocean,
off the coast of Newfoundland. Marine
birds that spend the rest of the year
at sea use the bare rock of Funk Island
as a place to lay their eggs, and
raise their chicks. And for hundreds
of years, fishermen have used it to
navigate and find their fishing grounds
in the rich waters nearby.
For a few short
months each summer, the granite
of Funk Island comes alive, dotted
and pulsing with the life and death
dramas of hundreds of thousands
of common murres and other seabirds,
struggling to feed their chicks.
But until they
went extinct in the 1800's, the
black and white penguin-like bodies
that covered Funk Island were those
of the Great Auk. Today, there are
no Great Auks living on earth. Many
were slaughtered for commerce where
they bred in the largest numbers
- on Funk Island itself.
Janet Russell
is an independent radio producer
in Tors Cove, Newfoundland. She
ventured out to Funk Island with
a couple of Newfoundland scientists,
biologist Bill Montevecchi
and archaeologist Priscilla Renouf,
both from Memorial University of
Newfoundland, to see what lessons
it holds for us today.
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Question of the Week:
Ear Wax
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Tom Currell, somewhere in cyberspace,
asks, Why does the human body produce
ear wax?
For the answer, we go to Dr. Brian
Blakley, Professor and Chair of
the department of otolaryngology at
the University of Manitoba.
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