Supreme Court, Coral Reef Forensics, Medical Harm

Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court (0:31) Guest: Renee Knake Jefferson, JD, Professor of Law and Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics, University of Houston Law Center, Coauthor of “Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court” One third of America’s Supreme Court justices are women - and if you only saw that number, you might be impressed. But look back over the court’s entire history: there have been 114 justices in all, and only four have been women: Justices Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor who are currently on the bench, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who retired in 2006. She was the first woman ever nominated to the US Supreme Court – that was in 1981 by President Reagan. Why didn’t any president nominate a woman before then? Would it have made any difference, in the scheme of things? Coral Reef CSI (22:16) Guest: Ken Goddard, Founder and Director, National Forensics Laboratory, US Fish and Wildlife Services What’s a forensic scientist to do with an underwater crime scene? Crime scene tape won’t work. Placing those little markers on the ground to identify clues. Yeah, good luck. Can you even lift fingerprints off of something that’s been underwater? I don’t know. But there’s a whole field of forensic science developing around these questions to help protect endangered habitats in the ocean – like coral reefs. Computing in the Quantum Realm (32:38) Guest: Jerry Chow, Senior Manager, Quantum Systems Technology, IBM The computer in your pocket (I’m talking about your smartphone) is well beyond what computers were capable of a few decades ago and getting more powerful. Maybe you’ve heard of supercomputers that harness the processing power of lots and lots of computers to be able to crunch huge amounts of data faster? Well, beyond that, are quantum computers that could go millions of times faster than traditional computers. IBM, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon and a bunch of startup companies are all in the race to develop quantum computers. A Doctor Confronts the Problem of Me