Insect-Borne Diseases on the Rise, Predicting Poverty, Alexa Prize Challenge

Guest: Sankar Swaminathan, MD, Don Merrill Rees Presidential Endowed Chair, Professor of Medicine and Chief of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Utah School of Medicine The warm weather brings on diseases spread by ticks and mosquitoes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just released a report showing cases of tick and mosquito-borne illnesses like Lyme disease, West Nile virus and dengue fever have tripled in the US over the last decade. Why are these diseases are more prevalent now than they were in the early 2000s?

Guest: Michael Xie, Computer Science PhD Student, Stanford University Within 12 years, the United Nations hopes to have eliminated world poverty. One hurdle toward that goal is measurement: how to identify poor areas that need support and account for economic improvement happening in other areas? Right now, the basic approach is pretty archaic – survey takers go door-to-door asking people about their assets and income.  But the Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab is working on training computers to identify poverty by looking at satellite images such as Google Earth.

Guest: Masi Noor, PhD, Lecturer in Psychology, Keele University In the hours after another violent attack, such as a mass shooting or a truck mowing people down in a public place, there’s always a public debate about what to call the killer. Even before we know the motive, some will be convinced he’s a terrorist, inspired by politics or religion. Others will say he’s a madman, driven by mental illness. What leads people to one conclusion or the other?

Guest: Nancy Fulda, Team Lead, BYU Alexa Prize Challenge, PhD Candidate in Computer Science Amazon’s Alexa is great at taking orders - she can tell you the weather or play your favorite podcast, but she won’t chat with you in any real way. She won’t laugh at your jokes or debate with you about who should with the NBA playoffs. Amazon hopes one day she will be capable of that. The Alexa Prize Challenge pits eight university teams against each other to come up with a bot that can hold a conversation. BYU has some skin in this game.

Guest: Rod Gustafson, ParentPreviews.com In the 1980s, a selfish heiress played by Goldie Hawn fell off a boat, woke up with amnesia and was duped into believing she was the hardworking housewife of a blue collar carpenter played by Kurt Russell. It was an elaborate revenge plot and a star vehicle for the two actors. The remake of "Overboard" (also called "Overboard") is now in theaters featuring Ana Faris and Eugenio Derbez. But this time the gender roles in the plot are reversed.

Guests: Benjamin Bikman, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and Developmental Biology, BYU; Mike Alder, BYU Technology Transfer Office Vitamin supplements are a $50 billion global industry and what would you guess is fueling its growth in the US right now? The baby boomers. Grand View Research Inc. says supplements to prevent muscle wasting and maintain healthy joints are expected to do big business as the boomers age. Imagine they could come up with a supplement that tackled muscle-wasting and the mental decline that comes with age? A brain-body supplement for boomers?