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Nearly twenty hospitals in New Hampshire are undertaking multi-million dollar additions or renovations.

In a few cases, the construction is the first modernization in decades.

But in most instances, the renovations are directed at making changes in patient care and to handle a growing number of patient visits.

Still, as New Hampshire Public Radio’s David Darman reports, some analysts say there’s a kind of profit motive behind the construction.

Today on Word of Mouth, shark attacks are on the rise, even as their numbers continue to decline. Plus Medpedia, purportedly the world’s largest collaborative online encyclopedia of medecine and health. We’ll hear from singer Sam Phillips. And 70 years after the Hindenburg disaster, zeppelins are taking to the air again. And researchers look to the most powerful atom smasher ever built, the Large Hadron Collider, to offer insights into the fundamental nature of matter.

(Photo by WIlly Volk)

There are two camps when it comes to Wikipedia – those who think it’s one of the great new tools of the information age; and those who cite the website as another example of our culture’s sliding standards and carelessness with facts.

After all, it’s an encyclopedia written and edited by the masses. But Wikipedia has become a powerhouse online. A search for anything, from “this day in history” to “Captain Beefheart” nets a wiki entry near the top of your results page, which is fine for quick and basic information - but the bar is raised when you’re talking about life-threatening diseases.

Entrepreneur James Currier will soon launch a new website called Medpedia that offers medical information in a Wikipedia-style format. But unlike Wikipedia, only doctors, physicians, and public health officials will be able to post information to the site. Currier joins Word of Mouth to tell us how Medpedia works, and how it differs from other medical websites.

(Photo by Jay Reed)

It’s summertime, which means one thing for TV viewers: shark week.

The Discovery Channel kicked off their annual television extravaganza with specials like "Surviving Sharks" and "Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever." But after hours of hearing unsuspecting swimmers describe terrifying encounters with sharks, we wondered if there was another side to the story.

For that, we called George Burgess. He’s the manager of the 50-year-old International Shark Attack File. He’s also director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, at the University of Florida. He explains why sharks are declining around the world, and yet the number of shark attacks are up.

(Photo by Amy Pritchett)