Our Changing World for Thursday 12 April 2007

Science

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its second report, on the impacts of climate change, as part of its Fourth Assessment Report. Dean Williams discusses the regional impacts in the Australia/New Zealand region and the Pacific with Jim Salinger and David Wratt, who are both at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, and Pene Lefale from the MetService.

Veronika Meduna catches up with Te Papa's vertebrate fossil curator, Alan Tennyson, and palaeontology professor Mike Archer, at the University of New South Wales, who are part of a team that discovered three tiny pieces of fossilised mammal bones at a site in Central Otago.

Environment

The diversity of life is thought to have arisen through a series of bursts of evolution, referred to as adaptive radiations. Dean Williams talks to Paul Rainey, at the University of Auckland, about research that investigates how the movement of species from one location to another can affect the speed with which life diversifies.

Health

Louise Wallace talks to Deborah Young, at the University of Auckland, who is investigating a protein called SIRT1 which is thought to be important for brain function.