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This story was reported with Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America's energy issues.

View Inside Energy's time-lapse map tracking crude oil shipments here, and read more about crude oil transport in the U.S. here.

Once a day, a train carrying crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken oil fields rumbles through Bismarck, N.D., just a stone's throw from a downtown park.

The Bakken fields produce more than 1 million barrels of oil a day, making the state the nation's second-largest oil producer after Texas. But a dearth of pipelines means that most of that oil leaves the state by train — trains that run next to homes and through downtowns.

After several fiery accidents, oil companies are under pressure to make their oil less explosive before loading it onto rail cars. But oil companies say rules requiring those modifications will create more problems than they solve.

The trains passing through Bismarck worry Lynn Wolff, an activist with the environmental group Dakota Resource Council. "Last December we got the wake-up call," he says. "That was the explosion and derailment of an oil train in Casselton, N.D."

Wolff is referring to a crash in farmland just outside the small town of Casselton. No one was hurt, but the crash could have been deadly had it happened in town.

This summer, Bismarck officials ran through a simulated oil train derailment, with responders operating on the assumption that some of the town's buildings would be devastated or destroyed, says Gary Stockert, Bismarck's emergency manager. "We exercised with the assumption that we had over 60 or 70 casualties."

Around the country, other cities and towns with oil train traffic are preparing for similar disasters.

In neighboring Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton "is concerned primarily about the safety of people along oil train routes, and in particular about the fact that this is a very volatile oil," says Dave Christianson, an official with the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Dayton has joined activists in asking North Dakota to force oil companies to "stabilize" the oil — to make it less explosive by separating out the flammable liquids.

Last month, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple convened a public hearing on the idea. Keith Lilie, an operations and maintenance manager for Statoil, which has a big presence in the Bakken, testified in front of a room full of oilmen in suits and cowboy boots who came to the hearing from places like Oklahoma City and Houston.

Lilie said he opposes having to build expensive tanks to heat the oil and separate out flammable liquids, like butane.

"Statoil believes the current conditioning of crude oil is sufficient for safely transporting Bakken crude oil by truck, rail and pipeline," he said.

Eric Bayes, general manager of Oasis Petroleum's operations in the Bakken, also testified. He asked what companies are supposed to do with those explosive liquids once they're separated from the oil.

The stabilization process, he says, would "create another product stream you have no infrastructure in place for."

But energy economist Philip Verleger, says the resistance is about money. "The industry never wants to take steps which increase the cost of production, even if it's in the best interests of everybody," he says.

Verleger says the opposition to proposed safety rules is short-sighted, and that the industry could actually hurt itself if there's another serious incident. "I think the movement of crude oil by rail is one accident away from being terminated," Verleger says.

Activist Lynn Wolff supports new rules that would make the oil less explosive, and says such regulation would protect people beyond North Dakota. "These bomb trains have been in Virginia and Alabama and blown up there as well," he says.

Federal officials in Washington are also considering ways to make oil trains safer, such as strengthening tank cars.

As for making the oil leaving the Bakken less flammable, officials in North Dakota say they'll make a decision by the end of the year.

This story was reported with Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America's energy issues.

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On Sunday, Jimmy Carter makes an appearance at a church in South Georgia alongside his eldest grandson, Jason. Jason Carter is the politician these days, a state senator, and is now making a bid for the governor's office.

Democrats haven't won that office in 16 years. Now, the younger Carter, a Democrat, is neck-and-neck with the Republican incumbent, Nathan Deal.

This March, on the last day of Georgia's legislative session, state Sen. Carter was allowed to take the podium as president of the Senate — a ceremonial turn for outgoing Senators.

"While presiding does this make you President Carter?" asked Republican Sen. Charlie Bethel. The Senate erupted into a mix of howls and applause.

With that one remark, Carter's family legacy moved front and center.

And in his campaign for governor, the younger Carter must contend with his grandfather's legacy. The name Jimmy Carter stirs up complex feelings among Georgia voters.

"Certainly there are people in the electorate who the only measuring stick they need to make a decision about Jason is Jimmy Carter, and whether that's fair or not, that's reality," Bethel says.

Bethel says he also does not doubt that the inverse is true as well, and that there are people who will say, "If he's Jimmy Carter's grandson, then he's got my vote and he doesn't have to do anything."

At times, Jason Carter downplays his grandfather's role in his campaign.

"It's a grandfatherly relationship. It's not about politics," Carter says. "It's him teaching me how to clean a catfish."

Carter says though voters know he is Jimmy Carter's grandson, they're ultimately going to make a decision about him and his vision for the future of the state.

But Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, says it's not so simple. "The truth is if he wasn't Jimmy Carter's grandson and everything else about his bio was the same, there is no way he would have ended up the Democratic nominee," he says.

Abramowitz says the younger Carter still has to contend with voters who don't have good memories of his grandfather.

"If they're old enough to remember his presidency, there were some pretty tough times and negative associations there, with the hostage crisis, inflation [and] rising gas prices," he says.

Carter also has to dodge comments from his opponent, Deal, who suggests he is riding his grandfather's famous name.

Jason Carter does publicly wield the tie with his grandfather when it's useful with key voters, like African-Americans, who by and large like the elder Carter.

"Now, the climate is so us-versus-them ... and he was not that," says 50-year-old DeDe Lawson. "He tried to be fair. So that's why I'm wishing for his grandson. I'm hoping he can bring that to the table, that sense of fairness."

On the campaign trail, Jason Carter does have magnetism. Even his Republican colleagues admit he works hard and takes the job of legislating seriously.

And inside the state capitol, political writer Tom Crawford points to Jimmy Carter's portrait, alongside previous governors, and notes it's been 34 years since Jimmy Carter left politics.

"It's an effect that diminishes every year," Crawford says. "Certainly it would have something of an impact on the governor's race, but not as much as some people think."

Jason Carter's other big challenge is being a Democrat in a red state. But if he wins, he'll do more than buck expectations.

He'll also outdo his grandfather Jimmy, who failed to win the governorship on his first try.

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Jimmy Carter

In recent years, social scientists have tried to find out whether important decisions are shaped by subtle biases. They've studied recruiters as they decide whom to hire. They've studied teachers, deciding which students to help at school. And they've studied doctors, figuring out what treatments to give patients. Now, researchers have trained their attention on a new group of influential people — state legislators.

Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, and graduate student Matthew Mendez wanted to see if state legislators were equally responsive to their constituents. For part of their experiment, the researchers sent emails to 1,871 legislators in 14 states with large Latino populations, asking the politicians what kind of documentation they needed to vote. They randomly assigned legislators to get the emails, but some emails came from a man named Jacob Smith, and others came from a man named Santiago Rodriguez.

"No one had really looked at sort of what underlies legislator behavior," Grose says. "Is there the possibility that legislators' own biases regarding race and ethnicity might rear their heads and that legislators might ignore Latino constituents more than white constituents?"

NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam dug into the study. Here are some highlights with some additional context.

Interview Highlights

On the study's findings

There was a difference, and the difference had a partisan tinge to it. Democrats responded about the same to both names, but Republicans were more likely to respond to the man with Anglo name rather than the Latino name. ...

Grose told me that he and Mendez decided to look a little bit deeper at the data and they found something very interesting. In many ways, the difference was less between Republicans and Democrats and more between some Republicans and other Republicans.

The researchers analyzed whether the Republicans in these states sponsored or co-sponsored voter ID laws. Now these are laws that are designed to reduce voting fraud. Critics of these laws have said that they disenfranchise minorities and others who are trying to vote for Democrats. Grose said that there was very strong correlation between Republicans who had failed to respond to the Latino constituent, and the ones who sponsored such laws.

"Republicans who support voter identification are different than those Republicans who did not support voter identification," Grose says. "Among those Republicans who did support voter ID laws, the Latino constituent was very unlikely to receive a response from their elected official. The difference was almost 40 percentage points, which is just one of the largest gaps I have ever seen."

Code Switch

How To Fight Racial Bias When It's Silent And Subtle

On how to interpret the study's implications

An implication of the study is that the same bias that caused legislators not to respond to a Latino constituent also drove them to sponsor voter ID laws ... but let me put it into context in a couple ways. The first thing is, lots of legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — did not get back to either Jacob or Santiago. So if a legislator is unresponsive, it does not automatically mean that he or she is biased.

Second, this research does not establish cause and effect when it comes to voter ID laws. It's fair to say the Republicans who sponsored such bills seem to be biased when it comes to responding to the Latino name versus the Anglo name.

But we don't know if that bias is what prompted them to sponsor the voter ID laws. That might be an inference, that might be a correlation, but it's not a proven fact.

Remember "Weebo," the floating robot from Robin Williams' 1997 movie Flubber? A cute yellow bot that lived with Williams' absent-minded professor character, "she" was a loveable gadget that seemed far-fetched at the time. But fast-forward 17 years and Weebo is a whole lot closer to fact than fiction.

Meet Jr., a consumer robot in development that could soon be an extra set of eyes and ears in your house. Tempe, Ariz.-based startup Roambotics is currently beta-testing its first version in about 10 to 20 homes before it goes on sale next year. Jr. is a general-purpose robot equipped with cameras, microphones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and autonomous navigation.

Jr. may resemble a Roomba, but it's a whole lot smarter: This next-gen robot really gets to know its user. Thanks to a behavioral user interface, Jr. acts sort of like a pet. It will start to learn your schedule and adjust how it behaves according to what it hears: For instance, if you sound busy because you're talking on the phone or watching TV, it'll stay out of your way. And Jr. is likely to serve as a pretty robust security system, since it pairs directly with your iOS device via an app — meaning you can peek in on your home from remote locations.

"It really is a first step toward a practical personal robot that you'd actually be able to have in your house and not just be a toy or a novelty," Roambotics CEO Scott Menor told OZY.

The current Jr. prototype operates on two wheels but can't go up stairs. Roambotics is refining how it moves around a home without crashing into walls or tripping humans. (The final version might also look a bit different than the prototype photos on this page.)

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Domesticated Robots And The Art Of Being Human

All Tech Considered

A Night At The Museum ... With Robots

Roambotics' approach to the personal robot is unique in how animal-like it is. In the same way that your golden retriever has a different personality from your neighbor's golden retriever, each Jr. adapts uniquely to its owner. So the more you interact with Jr., the more it'll reciprocate by trying to play games with you. And if you ignore it, Jr. may start avoiding you and turn antisocial.

"We really wanted something where it feels like a presence," Menor said. "So it's not just a product or a device that you have. It's more ... really like you have a dog."

No question, there's something a little creepy about having a Wi-Fi-enabled smart robot patrolling your house equipped with cameras and microphones. But Menor says they're incorporating secure technology that's not easy to crack into. Jr. will only communicate in an unencrypted way with a paired owner's phone. Moreover, Menor explained, the way Jr. stores skills and data, it's not really possible for someone to implement a malicious skill that could send images or sounds to strangers, since data can only be transmitted to its owner.

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Each Jr. adapts uniquely to its owner. But if you ignore it, Jr. may start avoiding you. Roambotics hide caption

itoggle caption Roambotics

Each Jr. adapts uniquely to its owner. But if you ignore it, Jr. may start avoiding you.

Roambotics

Pre-orders for the $499 robot should start in April, with shipments expected in the second half of 2015. Roambotics plans to open an API (application programming interface) for Jr. later in 2015, as well. That means that much like your smartphone, developers will be able to come up with new ideas for how to program Jr. Menor said Roambotics plans to launch a "skill store" — like an app store — where owners could buy different skills people have developed to make Jr. smarter and more useful. Down the road, it might even have health care monitoring capabilities, according to Menor. Jr. may eventually be able to monitor your heart rate and respiration or if you fall. Like fitness trackers, it could also be used to detect your sleep cycles and activity.

For Jr. to be a true success, it will need to seamlessly integrate into our lives. Despite the hype surrounding Google Glass, the device still hasn't reached mainstream appeal because (a) the original version looks ridiculous on people's faces; and (b) it feels unnatural to see people interacting with them in their daily lives. By making Jr. more petlike, however, Roambotics might have found the key to making these gadgets welcome in more homes.

No one's saying a robot will ever replace man's best friend, but it's highly conceivable that someday soon we'll have bots alongside us at the dinner table and beside our beds at night. And while you may never want to toss a ball with Jr., keep in mind you also won't have to stock up on dog food. Jr. feeds itself: The robot is programmed to find its charging station in your house on its own.

Vignesh Ramachandran is a tech buff and journalist working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow him on Twitter @VigneshR.

In our "Weekly Innovation" blog series, we explore an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet. Do you have an innovation to share? Use this quick form.

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