Mitsubishi Apology, Water Filtration, Peru, Pluto Close-Up

Guest: James Parkinson, J.D., Co-Author of "Soldier Slaves: Abandoned by the White House, Courts and Congress."  An Apology is Top of Mind today.  Mitsubishi has become the first private corporation to apologize to American soldiers captured during World War II and forced into deplorable conditions as slave laborers for years in the mines and factories for Japanese companies.

Guest: Randy Lewis, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at BYU  Floating on Peru’s famous Lake Titicaca near the city of Puno is a cluster of man-made islands. Some 1,200 people called the “Uros” live on the artificial archipelago made of thick reed mats that have to be regularly repaired and refreshed. It’s a precarious life, made more so by the lack of clean water for drinking. Yes, they’re surrounded by Lake Titicaca, but the waters are polluted by solid waste and sewage.

Guest: Joshua Wilson, Ph.D., Professor at the University of Delaware  Any English teacher will tell you that the downside to teaching writing is grading all those papers! Teachers may even choose to assign less writing than they’d like just because they just don’t have time to read all that student work. Fortunately, in this digital age, teachers can use essay-grading software to analyze and grade student’s essays, without having to sit down and read every paper.

Guest: Seth Shostak, Ph.D., Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research  The search for what's out there just got a very big boost from Russian tycoon Yuri Milner.  He's injecting $100 million into a major new Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence initiative.

Guest: Jani Radebaugh, Ph.D., Planetary Scientist at the BYU Department of Geological Sciences; Denise Stephens, Ph.D., professor in the BYU Department of Physics and Astronomy  The first color footage of Pluto and photos of all five of its moons recently arrived on Earth and got planetary scientists really excited.

Guest: Grace O'Connell, Ph.D., Professor at University of California Berkeley  Maybe it’s all of the sitting at desks we do in America, or the extra weight so many Americans are carrying, or just the fact that we’re living longer. But back pain – and by the same token back surgery  – seem to have become a fact of middle age. Just imagine if scientists could figure out how to – say with a simple injection – get that herniated disc in your back to regenerate and become healthy again?