Tuesday, October 2, 2007

My climbing partner Carsten P. Jensen in TV

It seems like all my friends are in TV these days. Yesterday it was my climbing partner Carsten P. Jensen's turn! The reason for his appearance in TV was a new NASA grant to build a new front-line research satellite, NuStar, to study black holes in the universe.

I don't know how many nights I have been confined in a tent alone with Carsten while he has talked about black holes, hard X-rays and the NuStar satellite proposal! I certainly know a lot more about the universe than I ever thought I would! I was thus very happy for him and his boss, Finn Christensen, when they finally got the green light from NASA to build the satellite. Now I am sure that Carsten will have many more stories about the building phase and the research results when the satellite is launched into space in 2011!

You might wonder what is so exciting about black holes (I certainly do :-). Interestingly, their technology might also be used to reduce radiation in mammographies. Pretty cool that Carsten's X-ray mirrors might both be used to study black holes and breasts!

You can see the TV broadcast from DR2 Deadline by clicking here (QuickTime or iTunes required).

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Tuesday, September 18, 2007

My wife in TV - again!

Yesterday my wife Elvira was on TV - again! This time she and professor Steffen Loft were interviewed for 10 minutes in the program Brunch on the regional TV channel TV2 Lorry. The topic was the same as last week, her recently published study showing that air pollution from traffic increase the risk of cancer, but this time they had much more time to explain the study and the results in detail. You can see the interview by clicking here (QuickTime or iTunes required).
Quite an exciting ending isn't it: new and even more interesting results are to be published soon. Stay tuned!

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Monday, September 10, 2007

My wife in TV: traffic air pollution increases cancer risk!

My wife Elvira Vaclavik Bräuner is a scientist studying the effects of air pollution on human health. I was actually a volunteer on one of her projects where I was locked in a chamber for four days so she could draw my blood, measure my lung function etc. while I was forced to bicycle for hours. Sounds like a perfect relationship right ;-)

Well, she just got the first part of her studies published in the reputed scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives which led to a press release from the Danish Cancer Society stating the main finding of her studies: air pollution from traffic increase the risk of cancer. This led to a media storm in Denmark today where she was live on the Danish CNN (a.k.a. TV2News) and then in a recorded interview in TV2 Lorry. The latter, which also included an interview with the Copenhagen Mayor of Technology and Enviroment Claus Bondam who now wants to reduce the traffic in the city, can be seen by clicking here (QuickTime or iTunes required).

Science can impact our world - let's bike to work tomorrow and reduce the air pollution!

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