This Climate Fix Might Be Decades Ahead of Its Time

"Every year, people add 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That's contributing to climate change. A few scientists have been dreaming about ways to pull some of that CO2 out of the air, but face stiff skepticism and major hurdles. This is the story of one scientist who's pressing ahead."

"Peter Eisenberger is a distinguished professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. Earlier in his career, he ran the university's famed Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, and founded Columbia's Earth Institute. He was never one of those scientists who tinkered into the night on inventions. But he realized he didn't need to be."

"'If you looked at knowledge as a commodity, we had generated this enormous amount of knowledge and we hadn't even begun to think of the many ways we could apply it,' Eisenberger says. He decided he'd settle on a problem he wanted to solve, and then dive into the pool of knowledge for existing technologies that could help him."

How Well Do You Know Your Fish Fillet Even Chefs Can Be Fooled

"In the world of seafood, looks can be very deceiving. And unfortunately for anyone who buys fish, it's easy for people above you in the supply chain to sell you something other than what you want."

"Oceana, a conservation group, has been beating the drum about seafood mislabeling for a while. Back in February, the organization released a study that found that 33 percent of the seafood it sampled at retail outlets in 21 states was mislabeled. (Note: The sampling was not randomized, so the findings should be taken with a grain of salt.)"

"This month, Oceana hosted a dinner with the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., to prove once again how easy it is to become a victim of seafood fraud."

Rule Would List All Chimps As Endangered Even Lab Animals

"This week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a new rule that would extend "endangered species" protections to chimpanzees held in captivity. Nearly half of all the chimps in the U.S. live in research facilities, and the regulation changes would make it more difficult to use these animals in medical experiments."

"But don't expect an outcry among most scientists. In the past decade or so, "there has been a significant shift away from using chimpanzees in research," says Kathleen Conlee, the vice president of animal research issues at the Humane Society of the United States."

"Scientists first became interested in studying chimps in the 1920s to gain insights into primate psychology — including, they hoped, the psychology of humans."

Playing Mozart on Mozart's Violin

"The violin and viola that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played himself are in the United States for the first time ever. The instruments come out of storage only about once a year at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria. The rest of the time, they're kept under serious lockup. I talked to the musicians who got to play them at the Boston Early Music Festival earlier this week before the violin's New York premiere at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York tonight."

"I could feel my heart stop. My fingers were trembling. And I'm pretty sure I had a huge smile on my face as I tucked the violin under my chin. The instrument that Mozart used to perform his own concerts! And professional musicians got the same thrill at the Boston Early Music Festival."

"For safety's sake, the violin and viola were flown here on separate airplanes. But the six-person team from the Salzburg Mozarteum who are safeguarding them don't make for a very flashy entourage. There are no huge, beefy guys in shades with crossed arms. No SUVs with blacked-out windows. Instead, there's just a small huddle of frankly not very intimidating-looking Middle Europeans."

Fancy Feet Wild Cheetahs Excel at Acceleration

"Nature documentaries always go on and on about how fast a cheetah can run. Cats in captivity have been clocked at 65 miles an hour, the highest speed recorded for any land animal."

"And yet, scientists know very little about how the animal runs in the wild, especially when on the hunt."

"'You can look at it and say, 'Oh that's fast,' , says Alan Wilson, a veterinarian at the Royal Veterinary College, London. 'But you can't actually describe what route it follows, or how quickly it's gone, or the details of [the] forces it has to exert to do that.'"

"Wilson and his colleagues were curious to know more, so they tracked a group of wild cheetahs in the Okavango Delta in Northern Botswana, using a sophisticated radio collar they had designed."

The Patient Who Let Us Peek Inside a Brain In 'Present Tense'

"Neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin worked with Henry Gustave Molaison, who had severe amnesia, for 50 years — from the 1953 surgery that caused permanent damage to his brain until his death in 2008."

"In 1953, 27-year-old Henry Gustave Molaison underwent an experimental brain surgery in an attempt to alleviate his severe epileptic seizures. The surgery left him with a form of amnesia; he could remember many things from the past, but was unable to form new memories."

"'He could tell us about where he was born, [that] his father's family was from Thibodaux, La., his mother came from Ireland,' says neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin. "He talked about the towns in Hartford where he lived and about his specific neighbors. He knew the schools he attended, some of his classmates' names."

"Corkin worked with and studied Molaison for almost 50 years, from 1962 until his death in 2008. She writes about how his case has helped scientists understand how memories are processed and stored in her new book Permanent Present Tense."

Can Going Vegetarian Help You Live Longer?, Maybe

"If you're looking for the definitive study that might persuade meat lovers to become vegetarians, this may not be it."

"New research published in JAMA Internal Medicine finds that vegetarian diets are linked to a slightly lower risk of early death — about 12 percent lower over a period of about six years of follow-up. But the link to longevity was more significant in men compared with women."

"The study is based on a one-time survey of more than 70,000 Seventh-day Adventists, a religion that emphasizes healthful diets and abstaining from alcohol, caffeine and tobacco as part of a godly lifestyle. Not all adherents are vegetarians, but the church considers a meatless diet to be the ideal."

French Learned To Make Wine From Italians 2,400 Years Ago

"The French weren't the first to make wine? Mon dieu! But as anyone who's sipped a Bordeaux, Champagne or Burgundy can tell you, they got pretty good at it once they learned how. And thanks to some molecular archaeology, researchers can now confirm they picked up these skills as early as 425 B.C."

"So who taught the French the art of viniculture? Probably the ancient Italians, says the man with perhaps the coolest nickname in science research — the 'Indiana Jones of alcohol,' Patrick McGovern."

"The Eurasian grape – Vitis vinifera, the source of 99 percent of the world's wine – was first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in the mountains of the Near East, says McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Later, Canaanite, Phoenician and Greek merchants all played a part in spreading that wine culture across the Mediterranean."

Documenting America's Environments: Then and Now

"In 1971, when the Environmental Protection Agency was in its early days, someone at the agency got the idea to send nearly 100 freelance photographers around America, to get them to document the country. These weren't postcard shots, but pictures of street corners, freight yards, parking lots, alleyways — wherever people were working and living. It was called Documerica, and it went on for seven years."

"A young photographer, Michael Philip Manheim, joined the Documericaproject in 1973. His assignment was to take a good look at the noise pollution in Boston from Logan International Airport."

"Forty years later, he went back to East Boston to take photos for the EPA's next generation of the project, State of the Environment. Manheim joins the Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon to talk about the project then, and now."

Modern Movement How the Ballets Russes Revolutionized Dance

"If your idea of ballet is a flurry of tutus and toeshoes, a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington will expand your vision. "Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes" shows the revolutionary impact a group of dancers, composers, artists and choreographers made on classical dance at the start of the 20th century."

"The exhibit features silver and red painted designs for costumes, gold- and pearl-encrusted princely robes, a flat curtain conceived by Pablo Picasso, and a film of the Russian dance company's most famous — and controversial — dance,The Rite of Spring. Choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky to music by Igor Stravinsky, the dance was scandalous when it was first performed in 1913."

Stephen King On Growing Up, Believing in God, and Getting Scared

"For 20 years, Stephen King has had an image stuck in his head: It's a boy in a wheelchair flying a kite on a beach. "It wanted to be a story, but it wasn't a story," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. But little by little, the story took shape around the image — and focused on an amusement park called "Joyland" located just a little farther down the beach."

"King's new thriller is set in North Carolina in 1973. Joylandhas a horror house and a torture chamber, but it's not exactly a horror novel. The park's fun house may be haunted by a ghost — which may explain the dead bodies — but the book isn't exactly a supernatural thriller, either. Instead, the book combines elements of crime, horror and the supernatural. The main character is a college student who aspires to write for The New Yorker. After his heart is broken by his girlfriend, he wants to get away from New England and takes a job in North Carolina, at the Joyland amusement park, where he enters a different world."

France Pays Tribute To First US Fighter Pilots

"Every Memorial Day weekend, a ceremony takes place just outside Paris to honor a group of Americans who fought in France. They're not D-Day veterans, but a little known group of pilots who fought for France in World War I, before the U.S. entered the war."

"This year's ceremony in the tiny town of Marnes-la-Coquette began with a flyover by two French air force Mirage fighter jets from the Escadrille Lafayette, or Lafayette Squadron, paying tribute to the men who founded the group nearly 100 years ago."

"In April of 1916, seven Americans enlisted in the French military to form the corps of the Lafayette Escadrille," said Major Gen. Mark Barrett, chief of staff of the U.S.-European command, who took part in the ceremony. The squadron grew to include 38 American pilots, led by a French officer, who's also buried here. These pilots from America and France, who banded together to form the Lafayette Escadrille, were pioneers in a new form of warfare, as aviation brought the battlefield to the skies."

A Race Against Time to Find WW I's Last American Doughboys

"Ten years ago, writer Richard Rubin set out to talk to every living American veteran of World War I he could find. It wasn't easy, but he tracked down dozens of centenarian vets, ages 101 to 113, collected their stories and put them in a new book called The Last of the Doughboys. He tells NPR's Melissa Block about the veterans he talked to, and the stories they shared."

"In 1998, the government of France had started awarding the Legion of Honor, their highest decoration, to living American veterans who'd served in World War I on French soil. And they undertook an intensive search for such men, and they ended up finding 550 or so men and women, and eventually I found a list of these people; and that was the first big break I got."

Why You Gotta Scratch That Itch

"Everybody itches. Sometimes itch serves as a useful warning signal — there's a bug on your back! But sometimes itch arises for no apparent reason, and can be a torment."

"Think of the itchy skin disorder eczema, or the constant itching caused by some cancers. 'A very high percentage of people who're on dialysis for chronic kidney disease develop severe itch that's very difficult to manage,' says Dr. Ethan Lerner, an associate professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School."

"Scientists now say they've got a much better clue as to how itch happens."

Go East Young Marijuana Dealer

"Chuck used to sell marijuana in California. But the legalization of medical marijuana in the state meant he was suddenly competing against hundreds of marijuana dispensaries. So he moved to New York, where marijuana is still 100 percent illegal. Since making the move, he says, he's quadrupled his income. (For the record: His name isn't really Chuck.)"

 "He spends pretty much every day dealing what he calls "farm-to-table" marijuana. On a recent afternoon in his dimly lit New York apartment, he was just about to complete a daily ritual: loading about 50 baggies of marijuana, worth a total of about $3,000 into his backpack, before heading out to make deliveries. "We're helping keep people stoned on a Friday night in New York City," he said."

Quantum or Not: New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else

"It's exactly the sort of futuristic thinking you'd expect from Google and NASA: Late last week, the organizations announced a partnership to build a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center."

"But questions surround the new type of computer at the lab's core. D-Wave systems, the company that makes the machine, says it is a quantum computer — a machine that runs on the strange laws of quantum mechanics. But although the computer can solve a certain type of problem much faster than conventional computers, critics say that the company's claims are not supported by scientific evidence."

"'It's not exactly science, what they're doing,' says Christopher Monroe, a physicist with the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. 'It's high-level engineering, and I think it's high-level salesmanship, too.'"

No More Smuggling Many Cured Italian Meats Coming to America

"No more stuffing your suitcases with delicacies bought in Italy, hoping the sniffer dogs at JFK or other American airports won't detect the banned-in-the-USA foodstuffs inside your luggage."

"In the U.S., they're called cured meats, the French say charcuterie and in Italy, the word for cured-pork products is salumi."

"Starting May 28, a four-decades-old ban on the import of many Italiansalumi will be lifted."

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that the Italian regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Piedmont, and the provinces of Trento and Bolzano, are free of swine vesicular disease. Imports of pork products from those areas, says the USDA, present a low risk of introducing the disease into the U.S. The disease was first detected in the 1960s and can survive cooking and even long curing."

Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold Ancient Life

"Scientists have discovered water that has been trapped in rock for more than a billion years. The water might contain microbes that evolved independently from the surface world, and it's a finding that gives new hope to the search for life on other planets."

"The water samples came from holes drilled by gold miners near the small town of Timmins, Ontario, about 350 miles north of Toronto. Deep in the Canadian bedrock, miners drill holes and collect samples. Sometimes they hit pay dirt; sometimes they hit water, which seeps out from tiny crevices in the rock."

"Recently, a team of scientists (who had been investigating water samples from other mines) approached the miners and asked them for fluid from newly drilled boreholes."

Guns At Last Light Illuminates Final Months of World War II

"In December 1944, the Nazis looked like a spent force: The U.S. and its allies had pushed Hitler's armies across France in the fight to liberate Europe from German occupation."

"The Allies were so confident that the Forest of Ardennes, near the front lines in Belgium, became a rest and recreation area, complete with regular USO performances."

"There would be entertainers coming through, including Marlene Dietrich, who was frequently at the front lines," says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson. "It was very cold in mid-December and she had wool underwear with drop drawers behind them, which was very racy for the soldiers."

At the Movies: A Swirl of Style and Substance

"Here's a movie pitch: A celebrated millionaire, known for public extravagance, lives right on the water in a fabulous mansion. He's smooth but reckless, drives like a maniac, has a powerful enemy and — despite a rep as a playboy — has only one girlfriend, who barely registers on-screen."

"You're the producer, so whaddya think? Does his story require lavish digital effects, swooping cameras, a rap soundtrack and the full-on 3-D treatment?"

"If I tell you his name is Tony Stark, otherwise known as Iron Man, probably yes, right?"

"What if his name is Jay Gatsby?"