12/5/17 Show feat. Kieran Bhatia on Hurricane Forecasting and Preparedness & Norbert Cruz-Lebron on the current situation in Puerto Rico

Kieran Bhatia models hurricanes to improve forecasting techniques in the program for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences here at Princeton University. In this episode, he tells us how hurricanes are forecasted, why it’s so difficult and common misconceptions about hurricanes. We discuss this year’s hurricane season and what it does (or does not) say about climate change.

In the last segment, Kieran tells us about how we can prepare ourselves better for hurricanes (NOAA site), his organization Canes on Canes in Florida, which aimed to educate on the science of hurricanes and hurricane preparedness.

Early in the episode, Norbert J. Cruz-Lebron, graduate student in neuroscience and member of the Princeton SACNAS Chapter, jumped on the mic to tell us about the current state of affairs in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Additionally, he tells us about his own experience being in the US while the rest of his family was at their home in PR when the hurricane hit, and shares testimonials from friends and family. (Hopefully he’ll be back on the show next year to tell us about his graduate research!)

You can support the Princeton Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science at @PrincetonSACNAS on Venmo.All donations will go to the Puerto Rico Recovery Fund managed by the Center for a New Economy (CNE) Group, an independent, non-partisan think-tank that advocates for the development of a new economy for Puerto Rico.

2017/11/07 Show feat. Sam Wang on Gerrymandering: Past, Present, and What to do About the Future

Featured image from a cartoon mocking the shape of a Massachusetts gerrymandered district.

In this episode of These Vibes, Professor Sam Wang visited the studio. He’s founder of the Princeton Election Consortium blog, co-host of WooCast’s Politics & Polls, and professor of molecular biology and neuroscience. We discuss his expertise in gerrymandering — what it is, how it came to be such an issue, the current state in elections and the Supreme Court, and what is and can be done to remedy our system.

Science news:

8/29/17 Show feat. Christa Baker on what fruit flies hear, and Matt Grobis on doing research

In this episode of These Vibes, Stevie speaks with neuroscientist Christa Baker about fruit fly mating songs and electric fish — and for each, how she is tracking their neural pathways to learn how their brains undergo the complicated process communication.

Additionally, animal behaviorist Matt Grobis comes on the air to talk about the nitty gritty “devil’s chess match” of doing research — the good and the bad.

Science News:

Narwhals are helping NASA understand melting ice and rising seas by Adam Popescu in Bloomberg
Leather grown using biotechnology is about to hit the catwalk in the Economist

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6/27/17 Show feat. Alex Todorov on the psychology of first impressions + Ingrid Ockert on “Programmed Inequality” in Britain

In this installment of These Vibes, Stevie spoke with Alexander Todorov, psychology professor at Princeton and author of the new book “Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions,” which just came out in hardcover earlier this month. The book dives in to his research on first impressions — the very human way we make character judgments after only a glance at another person’s face. These impressions are often incorrect, but can affect important decisions we make, like elections and criminality. In this interview we take a deep dive in to the history of the pseudoscience of physiognomy, as well as current research in psychology and the effect of first impressions on elections, criminal justice, and more.

Additionally, science historian Ingrid Ockert joins us to discuss the text “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing.”

Science News:

“Floral curve test shows what’s great for a moth is not so good for a flower” – 3-D printed imaginary flowers reveal hidden pollinator-plant conflict over flower shape
“Chinese province runs on 100% renewable energy for a week to test whether grid can cope” – ‘Clean energy is the ultimate way. We need to reduce reliance on fossil fuel’

3/14/17 Show feat. Cameron Ellis on Determining Consciousness, Sensory Substitution, and Uploading the Mind

In this show Stevie interviewed Cameron Ellis, cognitive neuroscience researcher at Princeton University. In the first part of the discussion Cameron explained the different theories of what is/isn’t conscious. Are animals conscious? Light switches? The Internet? How do we know that anything is conscious outside of our own selves?

In part 2, they discussed sensory substitution – this is new, fascinating research showing that we can use our current senses to detect new information, like magnetic fields, and our brain will integrate this in to its neural pathways. This research is extremely promising, and seems likely to be of great importance towards goals of, say, helping a blind person “see.”

In the last section, Cameron answers some great listener questions and delves in to the topic of uploading our consciousness in to computers. Is it still us?

This is the third time Cameron has visited These Vibes. The first and second interviews took place last year, and were all about the scientific and philosophical study, as well as history, of consciousness. These shows are not necessary as pre-requisites to the today’s show, but they are excellent additions. Highly recommend.

Other mentions in the show:

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12/13/16 Show feat. Thomas Macrina on Connectomes and Kasey Wagoner on the Equivalence Principle

Featured image is from Eyewire the connectome project run by Sebastian Seung at Princeton University.

Image in the Mixcloud embed above is from the Human Connectome Project at the University of Southern California.

This show is a little different. The plan was to have author and professor Patrick Phillips on for the first hour, alas there had to be a rescheduling at the last minute. Instead we will be interviewing Patrick Phillips on his book Blood at the Root at the end of next month (January 2017), so stay tuned.

Hour 1: Lots of music and some science news, including self-driving cars.
Hour 2: Thomas Macrina on machine learning, neuroscience, and mapping our brain – our connectome.
Hour 3: Kasey Wagoner, lecturer in physics at Princeton, on the bedrock scientific principle called the Equivalence Principle. In this discussion, Kasey tells us about the history, the principle’s importance, and current tests.

5/24/16 Show feat. Cameron Ellis on Consciousness and Cognitive Neuroscience, plus Ingrid Ockert Reviews “Making Nature”

In this installment of These Vibes, graduate researcher in cognitive neuroscience at Princeton University, Cameron Ellis, joined us in the studio to discuss his work on mental

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 10.25.47 PM — Cameron Ellis, Princeton University

processing as well as consciousness. In this three part interview Cameron details his research where he images the brains of infants, and what we can learn from it. Additionally, we pick apart what “consciousness” means, from both a scientific and philosophical point of view. We discuss the varying degrees of consciousness and how this relates to the consciousness of animals, like very intelligent animals such as ravens. And we discuss how this conversation can get sticky, particularly if one begins to equate intelligence with consciousness.

Further, Cameron mentions that consciousness wasn’t really studied scientifically until the 1990s, but since then there have been important milestones. For example, doctors are now better at determining the level of consciousness of an individual with “locked-in syndrome,” when someone is aware but cannot communicate verbally due to almost complete paralysis, and they can now make the patient’s time richer even in the face of the debilitating illness.

Cameron and I discussed so much, including his path to studying neuroscience and consciousness, partially by reading the book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes. I encourage you to listen.

Then, past guest and doctoral candidate in science history, Ingrid Ockert returned to the studio to review the book Making “Nature”: The History of a Scientific Journal by Melinda Baldwin. She summarizes the book which focuses on the – you guessed it – history of the famous scientific journal Nature – how it began in the late 1800s as a popular science magazine and then developed in to a rigorous peer-reviewed journal. Many topics are explored in the book such as the fractured nature of science research in the 19th century due to, among other things, language barriers, and how pay walls limit peoples access to science and who can do science. We discuss this further and mention Neil Turok’s TED talk on the subject of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), due to his detailing of the skewed nature of scientific research today away from, for example, African countries. Take a look:

Later, we bring this issue to today and discussed how scientific journals contain papers with research primarily funded by taxpayers’ money, yet are behind a paywall. This was discussed towards the end of a prior interview with immunologist Gloria Tavera, last semester.

At the end of Ingrid’s review, she leaves us with some interesting open questions and a few interesting companion books for further reading:

Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences, by Bernard Lightman,
Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain, by Peter Bowler, and
Scientific Babel: How Science was Done Before and After Global English, by Michael Gordon.

Give it a listen.