Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

QUICK HITS
12:15 Fruit and veg ripening
12:30 Bed sheets
12:50 Burnt Food Museum
13:10 Top 10 emerging technologies
13:25 China: giant hydro project
13:40 Annoying phone calls
13:50 Ping pong's coming home!

THE SMALL PRINT
First up this week, more of your food questions...we're looking at the science behind keeping our fruit and veg 'fresh'. Temperature controlled warehouses and the use of ethylene to speed up the ripening process can mean things last for weeks or even months after picking. In fact the aim is to have that apple alive until the first bite so it dies in your mouth. But are these long storage times doing anything to the nutritional value of our food?

At 12:30pm bed sheets how often do you wash yours? We're speaking to a clinical microbiologist about some of the things sharing a bed with you, and whether there's any health risks if you only change your sheets once every year or so. Plus, when it comes to buying sheets, it's a jungle out there; thread counts, ply, percale, Egyptian cotton...the list goes on. We pick our way through some of the jargon with Professor Raechel Laing, the Head of Clothing and Textile Sciences at the University of Otago.

And before the news the Burnt Food Museum in Boston is an altar to the overcooked, and a temple to the ever-so-slightly-singed. Deborah Henson-Conant's a professional musician and a really bad cook....what better qualifications do you need to be the museum's founder and head curator?!

After the news, at about 1:15pm, we're looking at emerging technologies that could shape our future over the next 2 to 5 years. Every year MIT's Technology Review publishes their top 10 and we're speaking to its editor-in-chief Jason Pontin. This week, engineered stem cells, a new way to measure what's happening on the internet in real time, and cheaper, more efficient solar cells called light-trapping photovoltaics.

At 1:25pm we'll head to China where there's plans to build the world's biggest hydroelectric project in the foothills of the Himalayas. The idea is to dam the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet creating a 38 giga-watt hydro plant. That's way bigger than the massive Three Gorges dam, and as you can imagine not everyone's stoked.

Then at 1:40pmscientific proof of why it's so annoying to hear other people talking on their cellphones!

And before we go the rising popularity of ping pong. The sport's got celebrities playing it and it's cheap and easy to learn. So now governments across Europe are trying to harness the sport's popularity to push their keep fit agendas. Sport England is funding 100 free open-air tables all over London- from Trafalgar Square to Heathrow Airport. We're talking to Diccon Gray from the English Table Tennis Association, one of the people behind the Ping London project.

WE'RE PLAYING THESE TRACKS TOO....
Track: Only Your Walkings
Artist: Richy Pitch featuring Wanlov the Kubolor and M3nsa
Album: Ye Fre Mi: Made in Ghana
Label: BBE Records
Catalog#: BBE118
Broadcast at: 12:25

Track: American Troglodyte
Artist: David Byrne
Album: Here Lies Love
Label: TODOMUNDO
Catalog#: 798048
Broadcast at: 13:10

Track: Money
Artist: The Flaming Lips featuring Henry Rollins
Album: The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs
with Henry Rollins and Peaches doing Dark Side of the Moon
Label: Warner
Catalog#: 500057
Broadcast at: 13:45

AND OUR THEME IS:

Track: The Green Termite
Artist: Jefferson Belt
Album: Table Manners
Label: Round Trip Mars
Catalogue #: RTM 2009