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Our Changing World headlines with summaries.
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Living the high life on shaky ground
Charlie Dreaver investigates the issues around strengthening apartment buildings to make them more resilient to earthquakes.
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Xenon - a stranger in search of strange particles
11 Dec 2019Xenon is a noble gas that turns up in various lights, gets used in xenon ion propulsion systems for spacecraft & plays a key role in the search for dark matter, says Prof Allan Blackman from AUT in ep…
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Vanadium - Model T Fords, big batteries & sea squirts
9 Dec 2019Vanadium makes steel stronger & lighter, is being used in what will be the world's largest battery, and sea squirts are full of it, says Prof Allan Blackman from AUT in ep 91 of Elemental.
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Uranium - first radioactive element to be discovered
6 Dec 2019Named after the planet Uranus & associated with Hiroshima & nuclear bombs, uranium is the highest-numbered element found naturally in significant quantities on earth, says Prof Allan Blackman in ep 90…
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Tracking Pacific golden plovers around the world
5 Dec 2019A satellite tracking programme is revealing, for the first time, where New Zealand's Pacific golden plovers or kuriri migrate to breed.
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Tungsten - highest melting point of any metal
2 Dec 2019Tungsten's very high melting point made it an ideal filament for incandescent light bulbs, & as it is in some enzymes it is the heaviest element used in nature, says Allan Blackman from AUT in ep 89…
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Titanium - light, strong & quite pretty
29 Nov 2019Titanium is light, strong, corrosion resistant & is used to repair broken limbs as it is able to get integrated into the bone, says Allan Blackman from AUT speaking from personal experience in ep 88…
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A spotlight on NZ lakes - Lakes380 part 2
28 Nov 2019380 New Zealand lakes are in the spotlight, and Marcus Vandergoes from GNS Science explains what happens to the thousands of sediment cores that will reveal a 1000-year history for each lake.
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Tin - from whistles to organ pipes & anti-fouling paint
27 Nov 2019The element tin turns up in all sorts of alloys, but tin cans are - mostly - not made from tin, says Prof Allan Blackman from AUT, in ep 87 of Elemental.
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Thulium - the most laborious of the lanthanoids
25 Nov 2019Isolating the element thulium was a truly laborious process that took many years, says Prof Allan Blackman from AUT in ep 86 of Elemental.
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Thorium - potential source of cleaner nuclear energy
22 Nov 2019Named after Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, thorium could provide a cleaner source of nuclear power in the future, says Prof Allan Blackman from AUT in episode 85 of Elemental.
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Lakes380 to reveal 1000-year history of lakes - part 1
21 Nov 2019Susie Wood from the Cawthron Institute says that sediment cores & eDNA will reveal a 1000-year history for 380 NZ lakes.
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Thallium - the poisoner's poison
18 Nov 2019Thallium is most famous for some infamous poisoned family cases & its appearance in an Agatha Christie novel solved a medical mystery, says Allan Blackman from AUT in ep 84 of Elemental.
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Terbium - turns up in old TVs & new Euro notes
15 Nov 2019A discovery from the chemically prolific Swedish village of Ytterby, terbium produced the green on old TV sets & adds security to Euro notes, says Prof Allan Blackman from AUT in ep 83 of Elemental.
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Making Wellington a predator-free city
14 Nov 2019By the end of this year Predator-Free Wellington hopes that the eastern suburbs on the Miramar Peninsula will be free from rat and stoats.
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Tellurium - usually associated with gold
11 Nov 2019Tellurium is a metalloid often found with gold and the US town Telluride is named after it, says Prof Allan Blackman, in ep 82 of Elemental.
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Technetium - the first synthetic element
8 Nov 2019Technetium was the first element on the periodic table to be synthesised. It is rare, radioactive and has only a few uses, says Prof Allan Blackman in ep 81 of Elemental.
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Tracking inner city rats
7 Nov 2019Victoria University researchers are radio-tracking urban rats in Wellington city suburbs to find out how large their home ranges are, to help improve predator-free trapping efforts.
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Tantalum - a tantalising chemical element
4 Nov 2019The metal tantalum is usually found with the element niobium, has a very high melting point but is a 'conflict mineral', says Prof Allan Blackman in ep 80 of Elemental.
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Sulfur - king of bad smells
1 Nov 2019Sulfur is responsible for some very bad smells, is the number one industrial chemical and is also an essential element, says Prof Allan Blackman in ep 79 of Elemental.
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Kākā TV - teaching smart parrots new tricks
31 Oct 2019Kākā and kea are well-known for being intelligent, and PhD student Daniel Donoghue is interested in how they learn new things.
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Strontium - from sensitive teeth toothpaste to nuclear fission
28 Oct 2019Named after a Scottish town, strontium can be highly radioactive & glow-in-the-dark, but also used in toothpaste, says Prof Allan Blackman from AUT, in ep 78 of Elemental.
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Sodium - a salt of the earth spectator
25 Oct 2019Sodium is vital for life & usually found in combinaton with other more interesting elements, says Prof Allan Blackman in ep 77 of Elemental.
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Enemy #1 - brown marmorated stink bug
Italy is suffering from a brown marmorated stink bug invasion. Damian Christie heads there to find out what New Zealand learn from their experiences.
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Top News stories
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