Why Trade Deals are Dying, Genome Project, Tech Transfer

Why Trade Deals Are Dying Guest: Charles Hankla, PhD, Professor of Political Science and International Political Economy at Georgia State University A major new trade agreement between the US and 11 countries in the Pacific Rim is among the final foreign policy accomplishments President Barack Obama hopes for before he leaves office. It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership – or TPP – and it’s not popular. Hillary Clinton opposes it. Donald Trump utters it like a curse word on the campaign trail. There are Democrats and Republicans against it in Congress.  But President Obama hasn’t given up.  Haven’t I Heard This Song Before? Guest: Richard Hass, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Philadelphia University The saying goes that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” But if your imitation becomes a hit song, you’re likely to get sued . . . like when rapper Vanilla Ice ripped off the iconic hook from Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure” for his song “Ice Ice Baby.” Vanilla Ice ended up settling out of court with Queen and Bowie for an undisclosed amount and a writing credit on the song. Why Queen and Bowie would want to get credit, for anything associated with Vanilla Ice is another matter.  The question of originality in pop music is a perpetual one. Led Zeppelin was just in court for allegations it lifted the famous opening riff in “Stairway to Heaven” from a song by a band called Spirit. The court dismissed that case. Last year a jury made pop singers Robin Thicke and Pharrell pay more than five million dollars to the estate of Marvin Gaye because their song Blurred Lines bore too close a resemblance to Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.” Tracing the DNA of Essays Guest: Patrick Madden, PhD, Associate Professor of English at BYU On the subject of imitation vs. inspiration, writers are also influenced by each other and those who came before them. A team here at BYU has developed a way to identify those connections. We’re not talking about plagiarism. This is more about language and style and structure. They call it the Essay Genome Project, because they use a massive database of essays and a bunch of computer algorithms to break the essay down into its essential building blocks – like the Human Genome Project maps the DNA of the body.  With the Essay Genome Project, you can trace the lineage of a writer like Annie Dillard and see that she’s on the same branch of the family tree as other contemporary essayists like Lia Purpura, John D’Agata and Elena Passarello. And if you like Annie Dillard, but don’t know those other writers, the Essay Genome Project would suggest you check them out. You can also enter your own essay into the system and see where you fall in the family tree.  LINK TO THE ESSAY GENOME PROJECT HERE. Hollywood-Inspired Filming of Drug Resistant Bacteria Guest: Tami Lieberman, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at MIT This week, the United Nations General Assembly will hold its first high-level meeting on the growing problem of superbugs - bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics. The World Health Organization says drug-resistant bacteria are an urgent global health threat.  To better visualize how this resistance happens, researchers at Harvard Medical School and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology used a giant petri dish and a camera mounted on the ceiling of a laboratory. The result is both mesmerizing and important for understanding how bacteria rapidly evolve to resist antibiotics.  Watch it happen here.  Low-Income Smokers Quit Insurance, Not Cigarettes Guest: Mary Politi, PhD, Psychologist and Smoking Cessation Researcher in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis Smoking is the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. It’s also incredibly costly: cigarette smoking is tied to $170 billion in healthcare spending every year in the US. So, it’s in everyone’s interest that smokers have health insurance. But many don’t. And changes created under the Affordable Care Act seem to have made the problem worse.  Manufacturing Better Materials on the Microlevel Guests: Oliver Johnson, PhD, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at BYU; Dallin Frandsen, Graduate Student at BYU; Spencer Rogers, BYU’s Technolgoy Transfer Office Take a look around you. I’m guessing a lot of the material that makes up your surroundings – the inside of your car, the desk or counter you’re working at right now is man-made material. If you could aim a high-powered microscope at that stuff, you’d likely see lots and lots of small crystals fused together. How that fusing happens and the direction the crystals face affects the strength and flexibility of the material.