
Image of Gulf Dead Zone: NASA and NOAA
Host: Jorge Salazar
Lead Producer: Mike Brennan
ES 22 Producers: Deborah Byrd, Beth Lebwohl, Ryan Britton, Emily Howard
This week’s lineup:
Dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Jorge Salazar speaks with Nancy Rabalais, a biological oceanographer at the Louisiana Marine Consortium, about hypoxia, a low-oxygen zone in the ocean that’s commonly referred to as a “dead zone”. 2011 is predicted to see the biggest Gulf “dead zone” ever recorded. Rabalais explains why.
Weird Science. Embarrassment centers in the brain. Ryan Britton reports … and sings.
PTSD. Dr. Paula Schnurr, Deputy Executive Director of the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at the U.S. Veteran’s Administration, explains how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder effects soldiers returning from war.

NASA’s Dawn satellite flying through the asteroid Belt: NASA
NASA’s Dawn mission. Jorge Salazar speaks with Dr. Chris Russell of UCLA about a space mission to Ceres and Vesta – objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dr. Russell is Principal Investigator of NASA’s Dawn mission, scheduled to go into orbit around Vesta – the most geologically diverse of the big asteroids – in July 2011. It’ll stay there, mapping Vesta, for one year. Then Dawn will head toward a 2015 orbit of Ceres – formerly the biggest asteroid, now called a dwarf planet.
This week’s musical contributors: