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UnDisciplined: The Community Ecologist And The Mathematical Physicist

KPFA
This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about community ecology and string theory.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking to a researcher who's demonstrated that some insects may actually benefit from pesticides. Then, we'll chat with a string theorist who is uncoupling ideas about the universe faster than you can say "Nikulin involution."

And after that, of course, we'll bring them together to try to build some connections between two very different areas of research. 

Edd Hammill is the principal investigator at the Spacial Community Ecology Laboratory at Utah State University and the authors of numerous papers that reveal the ways organisms are impacted as dynamic communities by our ever-changing world. 

Also joining us from Utah State University if Andreas Malmendier, who's been on a tear lately, with seven papers published in areas ranging from six-lin configurations to Nikulin involutions in string theory. 

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.