Asylum Policy, E-Scooters, Blind Navigation

Guest: Jodi Goodwin, Immigration Attorney, Harlingen, Texas While Congress and the President wrangle over funding for a wall, the Trump Administration is moving ahead with changes in how it treats people seeking asylum at the border. As of a week ago, asylum seekers arriving at the US port of entry in Tijuana are required to stay in Mexico while they wait for a US immigration court to decide if they’ll be granted asylum. The plan is to start doing the same thing at other ports of entry along the border.

Guest: Tarak Trivedi, National Clinician Scholar, Emergency Physician, UCLA, Greater Los Angeles VA Hospital If you live in a big city, or have visited one in the last year, you’ve seen the electric scooters available for rent by the minute. They’re a huge hit -and for some unlucky riders, a literal hit. Anecdotally, emergency rooms around the country report a spike in injuries when dock less electric scooter rental companies –like Lime and Bird –come to town. The first scientific study to actually track e-scooter injuries has just been published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Guest: Markus Meister, Professor of Biological Sciences and Executive Officer for Neurobiology, California Institute of Technology Blind people have two options for navigation: a cane or a guide dog. But there may soon be a third choice: augmented reality. A team at the California Institute of Technology is building a software program that guides the blind through a pair of goggles and spatialized sound.

Guest: Hillary Anger Elfenbein, Business Professor, Washington University in St. Louis What effect do you have on the people around you? Do you bring energy to room? Do tensions rise when you arrive? Everyone has an emotional signature, according to research by Hillary Anger Elfenbein and Noah Eisenkraft.

Guest: Andrew Bass, Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University and Director of the Bass Lab Neurobiologist Andrew Bass at Cornell University studies these humming fish for insight into how our brains and genes influence human behavior. Believe it or not, fish brains aren’t much different from our own.

Guest: Professor Kevin Warwick, Emeritus Professor of Cybernetics, Coventry University and University of Reading The human body is pretty remarkable. But engineer Kevin Warwick thinks it could be a lot better. We can’t communicate brain to brain, telepathically, for example. And we don’t have x-ray or infrared vision. Okay so Warwick’s gripes sound like he’s been watching too much science fiction. But he’s made a name for himself the last 20 years pushing the limits of what the human body can do when it’s merged with technology. He and his students at Coventry University and the University of Reading in England did some pretty wild experiments implanting electrodes and magnets in themselves, making themselves “cyborgs” as Warwick likes to say.