Search results for

Tristan Clum of member station KNAU reports on documenting dendroglyphs...tree carvings...near Flagstaff, Arizona. Starting in the late 1800's, sheepherders, many of from the Basque region of Northern Spain, carved basic messages or elaborate images into the bark of aspen trees in this area. Now the trees are dying, and historians are trying to compile information before it's too late.

A plan by Seattle scientists to use caffeine to trace human waste pollution has been abandoned because of the large amount of coffee being dumped into the sewage by motorists and espresso-cart operators. NPR's Noah Adams talks to Jonathan Frodge, Limnologist with King County Lake Assessment Program.

The BBC's Elaine Lester reports on the centuries-old conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Against the backdrop of recent calm there, the yearly march of the Orange Order seems more heated than in years past.

NPR's Julie McCarthy reports on a surprising leader in the high tech industry: Finland. Finnish technology companies like Nokia are among the most dominant players today, though the country hasn't always been so forward-thinking.

NPR's Mary Ann Akers reports on a new type of aviation navigation technology that will help prevent one of the most common reasons for plane crashes - miscalculating how far the plane is from the ground.

Commentator Ev Ehrlich says computers and the Internet may allow the economy to reach even greater levels of growth and productivity.

NPR's Larry Abramson reports on Toysmart, an online toy retailer that is declaring bankruptcy and wants to sell its customer list, despite the privacy policy posted on its Web site that said it wouldn't do that. The federal government could take action, if it decides the company deceived customers.

NPR's Snigdha Prakash reports that money fertilizes everything in Seattle, sprouting important architecture, philanthropy, and new companies. Most of the money comes from the software, telecom and Internet worlds. Prakash reports on an incipient trend: software moguls using some of their millions to attack problems that technology hasn't been able to solve so far -- like a cure for cancer.

NPR's Brenda Wilson has a special report on South Africa's explosive AIDS epidemic. The crisis is rooted in South Africa's history and the movement of its people. Labor migrations have occurred in South Africa since the beginning of the century. In the decade of the 1970's, under Apartheid, three-and-a-half-million black South Africans were forcibly relocated to rural homelands. The number of men who moved to industrial centers for work, living away from their wives and families for months at a time, significantly increased. Then, in the late 1980's, as white South Africans were being forced to relinquish political power, AIDS hit the country. Greater freedom for blacks brought an increase in travel between homelands and industrial centers and the AIDS epidemic moved with the people. Dependence on cheap, black labor and the removal of black South Africans to the homelands is continuing to drive the epidemic. A tenth of the population of South Africa is now infected with the AIDS virus.

NPR's Gerry Hadden reports on Mexican president-elect Vicente Fox's plans for restructuring key government ministers in an effort to fight endemic corruption. Fox is stripping the all-powerful Interior Ministry of much of its duties, and creating a new ministry in charge of federal police and intelligence services. He's also taking some powers away from the attorney general's office.