Mechanics of Football Broadcasts, Alaska Shipwreck, Religiosity

Mechanics of a Football Broadcast (1:05) Guest: Caitlin King, Line Producer at BYU Broadcasting  Games dominate weekend TV schedules in the fall. And it almost seems that watching a game on TV is better than seeing it live in the stadium. TV broadcasts bring you high definition replays and slo-mo and more angles than you can shake a stick at.  Over the weekend, we got a peek inside the intensive process of doing a live football broadcast. It was the BYU game against University of Connecticut. The BYU Broadcasting team had already been working for weeks before. Dozens and dozens of people are involved in the effort. On game day, about thirty of them are crammed into tight rows of desks in a semi-trailer parked just outside the stadium. Giant coils of cables snake into the trailer. Small TV monitors line the walls. Flashing lights and buttons checker the desks. It’s a broadcast control room on wheels that could double as a space ship in a sci-fi movie.  Memory Thief (14:45) Guest: Kyle Herges, Assistant Communications Professor at Dakota Wesleyan University and Author of “The Memory Thief”  Alzheimer’s is a cruel and confusing illness. There’s no prevention, no cure and no way to slow its course. Families watch the essence of their loved ones slip away.  After his mother was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, Kyle Herges was looking for a way to explain the disease to his children. He was also trying to cope. Both efforts came together in his children’s book called “The Memory Thief.”  Neva Shipwreck (29:05) Guest: Timothy Dilliplane, Col. (Ret.), Assistant Professor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Co-Principal-Investigator of the Neva Project  In January of 1813, a Russian ship called the Neva wrecked off the coast near Sitka, Alaska. More than a dozen of the ship’s crew had already died in the difficult journey from Siberia. Another 32 died when the ship broke apart on the rocks. But 28 men made it to shore alive. And then what? It was mid-winter in Alaska. They had nothing but what they could forage on land and scavenge from the wreckage. Remarkably, 26 of the men were still alive when they were finally rescued a month later.  The story of how they survived has remained a mystery, until now. Researchers from the US and Russia - funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation - believe they’ve found the campsite of the shipwreck survivors.  Religiosity and Health (51:58) Guest: Cameron Hopkin, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology at BYU  We think of religion as a spiritual practice, but it’s also found to have a large effect on people’s physical health. For instance, research in the last 20 years has found people who are religiously observant are less likely to abuse substances or engage in risky sexual behavior. They’re also less like to have cardiovascular disease and cancer. The question is WHY? What is it about being religiously observant that leads to positive health outcomes?  Parent Previews: “The Walk” and “The Martian” (1:08:47) Guest: Rod Gustafson, Film Reviewer at ParentPreviews.com  Director Robert Zemeckis’ new movie “The Walk” is about the Frenchman who famously walked a high wire between New York’s Twin Towers in 1974, and it’s so realistic it’s apparently giving movie-goers vertigo.  “The Martian” features Matt Damon playing an astronaut left for dead during a manned mission to Mars.  Tech Transfer: Avalanche Detection (1:24:10) Guests: David Long, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at BYU; Andre Brummer and Nicholas Moller, Representatives of Niivatech; Spencer Rogers, Member of BYU’s Technology Transfer Office.  Over the last decade years, an average of 27 people have died in avalanches each winter in the United States, according to statistics gathered by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. Ski resorts and federal land management officials spend a lot of time and effort attempting to predict where the next avalanche will happen, so they can prevent death, injury and damage to property.  BYU electrical engineering professor David Long and his students have developed an approach to predicting avalanches that entails radar 3D imaging.  More information about technology developed at BYU is available at techtransfer.byu.edu.