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Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific America, and I'm Steve Murseky.

This week on the podcast, we'll hear from Scientific American editor Davidei Kastelveki,

who's in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union,

and CNET's Michelle Thatcher talks about netbooks and tablet PCs.

Plus, we'll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news.

First up, Davidei Castelvechi.

He joined the staff of Scientific American a couple of months ago and made his first road trip this week to the AGU meeting.

We spoke the evening of December 18th. Hi Davida, good to talk to you.

Hi, Steve, great talking to you.

So first of all, let's talk just for a moment about what is the AGU meeting?

What are the kinds of subjects that get talked about at an American geophysical union conference?

It is broadly speaking earth sciences, I would say, but this means a lot of different things.

It ranges from water management to space science.

There were talks about other planets.

So it's earth Sciences in a very broad sense.

I know we spoke a little earlier today, and I know that one of the things that you learned about

...