Dear Science

Today in Dear Science, Ximena, Will and Reuben get down to the nitty gritty of some intriguing stories with AUT’s Allan Blackman. Allan takes us back in time to 1858 when Queen Victoria sent the first official transatlantic telegram to US President James Buchanan. We get into the nuts and bolts of the debate around alternative medicine, talking about a new study that finds cancer patients who turn to alternative treatments are 2.5 times more likely to die. Finally, Allan tells us about how art historians may be shocked to find out that a pigment used in analysing the legitimacy of historic artwork may have been incorrectly identified up until now.

Allan Blackman joins us again for Dear Science this week. We talk about a study linking increased failure rates at university with cannabis use; we look at Stuart Nash's (questionable) plan to replace chlorine in water with ozone; finally, we finish with how researchers have been inspired by slug goo in their development of a new surgical wound adhesive. 

The nerdy science banter continues on Dear Science this week, even though our dear producer Adam has gone for good over to his big-boy job at Fairfax :( Allan nevertheless ploughs on sans-Adam, telling the Wednesday crew about how the first female to receive a prestigious mathematics award has died; how Harvard scientists have managed to store video inside DNA (and about a band who have released an album on strands of genetic material); and about how the New Zealand team got one silver and three bronze medals in the recent Chemistry Olympiad.  

AUT’s Allan Blackman brings his best chemistry banter game to the studio today for Dear Science. He tells Ximena & Adam about a new polymer worm that’s been designed to move when it reacts with light,  how the current Qatar diplomatic crisis is impacting the world’s supply of helium, as well as about how chemists have recently explained the reason why humans don’t constantly spontaneously combust.