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.