Virtually Speaking Science

Mars missions and the Curiosity landing anniversary

Kelly Hills talks to Madhusudan Katti about reconciliation ecology: managing urban ecosystems for biodiversity; which includes managing the impact of droughts. Read Dr. Katti on water management in cities in the American West, and on global urban biodiversity: Water and the City: A Dispatch From an American Frontier Town http://www.thenatureofcities.com/2013/02/10/water-and-the-city-an-american-frontier-tale/ Biodiversity can flourish on an urban planet https://theconversation.com/biodiversity-can-flourish-on-an-urban-planet-18723

Former NASA astronaut and planetary scientist Tom Jones and Alan Boyle preview Asteroid Day, an occasion that highlights the threats and opportunities posed by near-Earth objects. Scores of Asteroid Day events are scheduled around the world on Tuesday, which marks the 107th anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska asteroid explosion. Jones is the chairman of the Committee on Near-Earth Objects of the Association of Space Explorers, a supporter of Asteroid Day and signerr of the 100X Declaration.

Kelly talks with Dr. Kaberi Kar Gupta, Principal Scientist of the Urban Slender Loris Project, where citizens and scientists learn about this small nocturnal primate found only in Sri Lanka and Southern India in order to figure out how urban coexistance might be possible. Slender lorises are arboreal and therefore require continuous forest canopy. This continuity is created by either large trees that are close to each other in old forests or by the climbing vines in forests where the understory is undisturbed. Their preferred diet is mostly insects and fruit.

The science of swaying popular opinion: think vaccines. Dartmouth political scientist/psychologist Brendan Nyhan specializes in the cognitive biases that come with identity politics. Jennifer and Brendan talk about the psychology of changing minds, how our beliefs and opinions are tied to personal identity, and what does and does not work in terms of strategy when it comes to swaying popular opinion. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/upshot/why-californias-approach-to-tightening-vaccine-rules-could-backfire.html http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/vaccine-denial-psychology-backfire-effect

Alan Boyle talks with Mark Showalter, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, about the latest findings about Pluto and its moons, next month's flyby of the dwarf planet by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, the "Our Pluto" program to name geological features in the Pluto system, and the ins and outs of discoveries in the outer solar system.

Discuss upcoming plans for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world's largest and most powerful particle collider, and the largest single machine in the world – The LHC allows physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics.

Tensor networks, quantum information, emergent space-time, black hole firewalls, cyber security. J ennifer talks with Shaun Maguire, a mathematical physicist with expertise in control theory, statistics and quantum computing. PhD student working in quantum information at Caltech. Founding member of Escape Dynamics Follow @shaunmmaguire @jenlucpiquant

What’s up at Virgin Galactic? Five months after the tragic loss of SpaceShipTwo and one of its pilots, the company is building a new SpaceShipTwo – and moving ahead with a project called Launcher One to put small satellites in orbit. Alan Boyle – Science editor, NBC News Digital – talks with Will Pomerantz, Virgin Galactic’s vice president for special projects, talks about the space venture’s next frontiers. Follow @b0yle@VirginGalactic

Anatomy, identity, intersex. Medical historian/ethicist Alice Dreger (Northwestern) and Kelly Hills discuss Dreger's new book, Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science.

What questions are scientists asking about the existence of intelligent extraterrestial life? Alan Boyle taks with Seth Shostak – Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI – and Don Lincoln –physicist at Fermilab, member of the science team for the Compact Muon Solenoid at the Large Hadron Collider. “Alien Universe” is Don Lincoln's book about the scientific as well as cultural aspects behind our interest in the search for extraterrestrial life. Seth Shostak is the author of...

I. Glenn Cohen talks with Kelly about the multi-billion dollar industry of medical tourism and his recent book Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law and Ethics (Nov. 12th; Oxford University Press) Cohen, Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School is a co-director of Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

Laurie Paul, philosophy professor at UC-North Carollina, Chapel Hill; 2014 Guggenheim fellow talks with Jennifer Ouellette about empathy, identity and whether having a child can be considered a rational decision (she’s pro-childless despite having two kids of her own). Per her website: "My main research interests are in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, especially temporal phenomenology, time, perception, the ontology of mental states, the philosophy of cognitive science, mereology,...

A physicist at Fermilab, member of the science team for the Compact Muon Solenoid at the Large Hadron Collider and the author of two books about the LHC, “The Quantum Frontier” and “The Large Hadron Collider” Don Lincoln has also written a book about the scientific as well as cultural aspects behind our interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, titled “Alien Universe.” An enthusiastic science popularizer, he shares video, news and events through many media, including Facebook...

Medical anthropologist, Adia Benton and Kelly Hills talk about Benton's new book and the spread of and response to Ebola. HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone (Feb 15, 2015), is an ethnographic account of how HIV exceptionalism -- the idea that HIV/AIDS is an exceptional disease requiring an exceptional response -- shapes local institutions, cultural and political idioms of development and the lived experiences of HIV-positive individuals. Follow @rocza...

Physicist Ainissa Ramirez, co-author of Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America's Game talks wih host Jennifer Ouellette about Newton's Football, life as a science evangelist and Science Underground, her new micro-podcast with journalist partner, Bill Retherford. Follow @AinissaRamirez @JenLucPiquant

Marc Abrahams, creator of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and editor of the Annals of Improbable Research returns to talk with Cosmic Log's Alan Boyle. B0yle on strange science. "Last, but not least, there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'" — Nature Follow @MarcAbrahams @B0yle

Bethany Brookshire talks with Kelly about science in the kitchen. Follow @rocza @SciCurious Read Kelly at Life as an Extreme Sport Read Bethany at ScienceNews/SciCurious and Eureka!Lab.

Cognitive neuroscientist and author of FLICKER, Your Brain on Movies Jeff Zacks talks with Jennifer Ouellette about the history of cinema and the latest research to explain what happens between your ears when you sit down in the theatre and the lights go out. Zacks is the Director of The Dynamic Cognition Laboratory in the Psychology Department at Washington University in St. Louis. "Research in the lab explores two main areas - how we perceive and represent temporal structure in everyday...

Undead characters have terrified popular audiences for centuries, but when analyzed closely, their behaviors and stories—however farfetched—mirror our own in surprising ways. Jennifer talks with Glen Whitman & James Dow about Economics of the Undead: Zombies, Vampires, and the Dismal Science. Economic recovery after the zombie apocalypse, analyzing vampire investment strategies, illuminating the market forces that affect vampire-human romances....