Talk of the Nation from NPR

Americans have tended to save more and spend less in the years since the economic downturn in 2008. But according to a survey from BankRate.com, only 54 percent of Americans have more emergency savings than credit card debt.

NPR's Neal Conan reads from listener comments on previous show topics including the concept of "black cool," Jeremy Lin and "Linsanity," and which country's constitution Egypt should use as an example.

Photojournalist Danfung Dennis has captured the brutalities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for major publications, including The New York Times, Time magazine, The Guardian and The Washington Post.

Inspired by these experiences, Dennis embedded with the U.S. Marines Echo Company in Afghanistan and created the documentary Hell And Back Again.

Stories about life on Native American reservations often focus on the hardships — alcoholism, drugs, violence and poverty. In Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life, Ojibwe writer David Treuer strives to capture stories about the beauty of life on Indian reservations.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will review the case of Xavier Alvarez — one of the first people to be convicted under the Stolen Valor Act. In a The Washington Post op-ed, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, argues that stolen valor should not be criminalized.

While Western officials believe Iran is seeking to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon, Iran's leaders contend it is for peaceful purposes only. NPR's Mike Shuster discusses Iran's regional, diplomatic and nuclear goals.

Writing in the journal Nature, UCSF pediatrician Robert Lustig and colleagues suggest regulating sugar just like alcohol and tobacco--with taxes and age limits, for example--due to what they call the "toxic" effects of too much sweet stuff. Education, they say, is not enough.

Two studies in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggest short and long-term exposure to air pollution can increase the risk of stroke and cognitive declines. Study author Jennifer Weuve discusses the results, and why particulate matter and gases like ozone may harm the body.

Duke biologist Sarah Zylinski wants to better understand how cuttlefish see the world. Like their relatives octopus and squid, cuttlefish are master camouflagers--and Zylinski says you can learn something about how they process visual information by testing how they change their skin patterns in relation to different backgrounds.

Transcript

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Last week, the government approved the first new nuclear reactor power plants in over 30 years, but in the meantime, the Department of Defense has been investigating a different energy source for its military bases: solar.

My next guest says the military could install seven gigawatts of solar power on its bases. That's roughly equivalent to the output of seven nuclear power plants, and that's all without interfering with bombing ranges or rocket tests and of course the desert tortoise.