Digging Deep: what on earth is there to learn from dirt?

There’s a big difference between human time and Earth–or soil–time. It’s what makes climate impacts so difficult to imagine, and climate solutions so challenging to fully realize. Take it from someone who knows: Adrian Gallo has spent the last decade studying the very idea of “permanence.”

It took an entire day to dig a 1x1x1 meter perfectly square soil pit in the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest outside of Eugene, Oregon. It’s a terribly cumbersome process, but you get much better data from this sampling method compared the conventional methods and the photos are better.

Adrian has dug through a lot of dirt. As a recent PhD graduate in soil science, his research focused on the carbon sequestration potentials of soil. Soil holds about twice as much carbon as our atmosphere. If you factor in permafrost (frozen soils in cold regions that are rapidly thawing) then soil holds nearly three times more carbon than both the atmosphere and all vegetation combined. And that’s a lot.

Let’s back up a second for a quick carbon cycle overview: plants use CO2 to produce sugars through photosynthesis. Microbes eat these sugars, inhaling oxygen and respiring CO2, and when plants and soil decay, they release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. There’s a delicate balance between soil being a carbon sink (absorbing more carbon than it releases) or a carbon source (the opposite). More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere = more greenhouse gasses; more climate uncertainty.

Some of Adrian’s soil samples included sites in Alaska where the ground is permanently frozen year around, leading to pockets of frozen water, leading to the presence of an “ice wedge” seen here. In order to preserve the integrity (physical, chemical, and biological) of these unique soils, sampling and processing had to occur in a walk in freezer.

Soil’s a tricky thing to study. The age of carbon stored in soil ranges widely. Some plant-derived carbon enters the soil and cycles back into the atmosphere in a number of hours, but other soil carbon can remain underground for thousands of years. And around 12,000 years ago (right around the end of the last ice age) soils used to hold nearly 10% more organic carbon than they do now. Most of that carbon loss came along with the spread of industrial agriculture in the last 200 years. If we could regain some of that carbon storage capacity, we’d have a powerful natural climate solution.

Adrian examined soil cores from nearly 40 representative ecosystems across North America. Adrian’s research was unique in not only its depth (at below 30 cm they tested beyond most existing soil research) but also its length (part of a 30 year project).

The findings? First, soil can indeed be a natural climate solution, but only if farmers can be convinced to alter their land management practices in perpetuity. Many land management practices to prevent carbon escape have been largely the same since the Dust Bowl (minimize tilling, plant natural windbreaks, cover crops, etc) but the expense has not made the switch financially worthwhile. To incentivize farmers, the emerging carbon market allows farm managers to get paid for the carbon they store by selling credits to large companies wanting to offset their emissions. It’s an interesting idea, but also plagued with problems. Big corporations are eager to market themselves as more climate friendly, which often leads to greenwashing. But more importantly, there’s a big question over how long this carbon needs to stay in the soil in order for it to count as a credit. It’s easier to motivate a farmer to alter their land management for 30 years–but that’s thinking in human time, not soil time, and that shortsightedness has some dire consequences, even if moving in the right direction. Now try convincing farmers to use these practices for 100 years–still not on the same scale as soil, but certainly getting closer, and an even tougher sell.

Second, much to Adrian’s and the other researchers’ surprise, there seemed to be a homogenizing effect in endmembers of the soil. No matter what plant types grew aboveground, the distribution of plant-end-members was largely the same, from grasslands to mountain ranges. Adrian coined this term “ecosystem inertia” and it’s still not known why exactly this happens.

After a decade of dirt, Adrian is pivoting away from academia and into the renewable energy sector. Tune in this Sunday May 21 at 7pm at 88.7 to hear more about his research and what exactly we can learn from dirt. Learn more about his work here.

Cheese and disease: how bacteria survive long term

This week we have Andrea Domen, a MS student in Food Science and Technology co-advised by Dr. Joy Waite-Cusic and Dr. Jovana Kovacevic, joining us to discuss her research investigating some mischievous pathogenic microbes. Much like an unwelcome dinner guest, food-bourne pathogens can stick around for far longer than you think. Andrea seeks to uncover the mechanisms that allow for Listeria monocytogenes, a ubiquitous pathogen found in dirt that loves cheese (who doesn’t?), to persist in dairy processing facilities.

Listeria hysteria

Way back in the early 2000s, there were two listeriosis outbreaks that were linked to cheese. Because of these two outbreaks, the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control conducted a sampling program over the course of a decade. From this program, 88 isolates of L. monocytogenes from five different facilities were recovered. Within this set of isolates, 63 were from one facility which is now (perhaps unsurprisingly) shut down. Those 63 microbes were essentially clones of each other, which means this one lineage of microbes seemed to carry something that allowed them to survive for multiple years. So how did that lineage of Listeria survive? Turns out, like a 1990’s Reebok, they pump it. Listeria uses a protein in its cell membrane called an efflux pump to remove harmful chemicals like sanitizers, antibiotics, and heavy metals from the cell. Essentially, when the cell absorbs something that is too spicy – it’ll yeet it back out.

Don’t cry over contaminated milk

The idea that food borne pathogens are evolving to withstand processing environments is alarming, but fret not, the results of Andrea’s research are a first step to avoiding the creation of these super microbes in the first place. Instead, it can serve as a warning story for dairy production facilities about what can happen when L. monocytogenes contamination isn’t properly handled. In healthcare, it’s not uncommon to treat a microbial pathogen with multiple medications – as becoming resistant to several treatments is harder for the microbe than becoming resistant to just one. We are also able to apply this treatment method to sanitizing food production facilities by combining different sanitizers – but that is best left up to the chemists to avoid accidentally making an explosion or lethal gas.

To hear more about how Listeria can survive better than Destiny’s Child be sure to listen live on Sunday, May 7th at 7PM on 88.7FM, or download the podcast.

The noxious nucleocapsid

“Structure informs function” says Hannah Stuwe, a second year PhD student in Biochemistry and Biophysics (BB), summing up the big picture of her discipline. Hannah works in the lab of Prof. Elisar Barbar, using biophysical techniques to study essential proteins encoded by the SARS-Cov2 virus.

Much attention has been paid to the spike protein of the SARS-Cov2 virion, which is the target of the vaccines developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hannah’s research digs into another crucial protein called the nucleocapsid, which plays a role in organizing and packaging the viral genome. Proteins are the primary molecular actors in most biological process, so a detailed structural understanding of the proteins involved could shed light into how the virus disrupts the infected cell. It could also help to develop therapies for people who contract COVID.

The SARS-Cov2 genome is made of RNA wound around nucleocapsids.

The primary analytical technique that Hannah uses is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), which probes the atomic nuclei within the protein using magnetic fields. Proteins mainly consist of hydrogen and nitrogen, so these two elements are analyzed separately with different NMR protocols. The resonance information from the individual hydrogen and nitrogen atoms can be combined into a two-dimensional landscape. This gives a rich picture of the protein structure, including how the conformation changes over time and how it interacts with RNAs and other proteins.

Hannah preparing samples for NMR analysis.

Hannah focuses on a short stretch of the nucleocapsid which is intrinsically disordered, meaning that it does not fold to a stable configuration. Instead, the structure of this region varies according to chemical modification by other proteins. When phosphoryl chemical groups are added, the region adopts an open configuration that exposes the viral genome, allowing it to be transcribed by the hijacked cell’s machinery. Without phosphorylation, the structure becomes more compact, possibly making it easier to spread the virion to other cells.

Hannah went to Oregon State for her undergraduate degree in BB and knew her advisor at the time. After graduating in 2019, she worked for a while at an industrial hemp company, working with natural cannabinoid products. Soon after, she felt the call to return to graduate school and accepted a laboratory job and eventually a PhD position with Prof. Barbar. For the rest of her degree, Hannah will analyze the mutations that are continually reshaping the SARS-Cov2 genome.

This is also a special episode because Hannah is in the process of joining the ID team as a host! To hear more about her research before she becomes a regular on the other side of the mic, tune in tonight, April 30^th, at 7pm on 88.7 KBVR.

The opposite of a pest: Bees, wasps and other beneficial bugs

Lots of terrestrial invertebrates have bad reputations. Spiders, bees, flies, wasps, ants. They’re thought of as pests in the garden or they are perceived as threatening, possibly wanting to sting or bite us. I’ll admit it, I’m terrified and grossed out by most invertebrates every time I see one in my house. But this week’s guest may have successfully managed to get me to change my tune…

*Scott (left) and his intern/doppelganger Tucker (right) in the field.*

Scott Mitchell is a 4^th year PhD student in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences advised by Dr. Sandy DeBano. His overarching research goal is to understand how different land management practices may impact beneficial invertebrate communities in a variety of managed landscapes. Yes, you read that right: beneficial invertebrates. Because while many invertebrates have a bad rep, they’re actually unsung heroes of the world. They pollinate plants, aerate soil, eat actual pest invertebrates and are prey for many other species. In order to tackle his overarching research goal, Scott is conducting two studies in Oregon; one focuses on native bees while the second looks at non-pollinators such as wasps, spiders, and beetles.

(See captions for images at the end of the blog post)

The first study occurs in the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range which is managed by the US Forest Service. The initial research at Starkey in the 1900s was about how cattle grazing impacts on the land. Since then, many more studies have been undertaken and are ongoing, including about forest management, wildlife, plants, and recreation. For Scott’s study, he is collaborating with the Forest Service to look how bee community composition may differ in a number of experimental treatments that are already ongoing at Starkey. The two treatments that Scott is looking into are thinning (thinned vs unthinned forest) and ungulate density (high vs low). The current hypothesis is that in high ungulate densities, flower booms may be reduced due to high grazing and trampling by many ungulate (specifically elk) individuals, thus reducing the number of available blooms to bees. While in the thinning treatments, Scott is expecting to see more flower blooms available to bees in the thinned sites due to increased access to light and resources because of a reduced tree canopy cover. To accomplish this project, Scott collects bee samples in traps and handnets, as well as data on blooming plants.

(See captions for images at the end of the blog post)

Scott’s second study explores non-pollinator community composition in cherry orchards in the Dalles along the Columbia River Gorge. Agricultural landscapes, such as orchards, are heavily managed to produce and maximize a particular agricultural product. However, growers have options about how they choose to manage their land. So, Scott is working closely with a grower to see how different plants planted underneath orchards can benefit the grower and/or the ecology of the system as a whole.

To hear more details about both of these projects, as well as Scott’s background and several minutes dedicated solely to raving about wasps, tune in this Sunday, April 23^rd live on 88.7 FM or on the live stream. Missed the show? You can listen to the recorded episode on your preferred podcast platform!

Figure captions

Image 1: This bright green native bee is foraging on flowers for nectar and pollen. It is probably in the genus Osmia.

Image 2: A brightly colored bumblebee foraging on a rose.

Image 3: This is one of the most common bumblebee species in western Oregon – the aptly named yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii).

Image 4: Most native bees, like this small mining bee are friendly creatures and will even crawl onto your hands or fingers if you let them. No bees (or human fingers) were harmed in the making of this photo.

Image 5: While Scott doesn’t know what his favorite wasp is, this large furry, friendly bee is his favorite native bee species. It is known as the Pacific digger bee or Anthophora pacifica. This is his favorite bee because they are very agile fliers and fun to watch foraging on flowers. They are a solitary species that lives in the ground.

Image 6: Not only are wasps beautiful, but sometimes the signs they leave behind can be too. This is a gall from a gall forming cynipid wasp. Wasp galls are a growth on plants that occurs when a wasp lays its eggs inside of a leaf or other plant structure.

Image 7: This is a pair of wasps in the family Sphecidae. The wasp on top is a male wasp (males are often smaller than females in wasps and bees) and he is likely guarding a potential mate by hanging onto her back.

Image 8: This is a beautiful bright metallic jewel wasp, probably in the family Chrysididae. This wasp was mentioned in the episode.

Image 9: This sphecid wasp is foraging on nectar on flowers. Many insects, including wasps, use nectar as an energy source in their adult life stage – even if they act as predators when foraging for their young.

Image 10: This is a tiny wasp on a flower. This wasp is around 1.5-3 millimeters long.

Nobody wants to eat bitter cheese

There are many adjectives used to describe the taste of different kinds of cheese: mild, tangy, buttery, nutty, sharp, smoky, I could continue but I won’t. Our preferences between these different characteristics will then drive what cheese we look for in stores and buy. But I would wager that most people (or dare I say anyone?) are rarely looking for a bitter cheese. I had never thought about how cheese could be bitter; probably because it’s something that I’ve never tasted before and that’s because the cheese production industry actively works to prevent cheese from being bitter. Intrigued? Good, because our guest this week researches why and how cheese can become bitter.

Paige Benson is a first year Master’s student advised by Dr. David Dallas in the Food Science Department. For her research, Paige is trying to understand how starter cultures affect the bitterness in aged gouda and cheddar cheeses. The cheese-making process begins with ripening milk, during which milk sugar is converted to lactic acid. To ensure that this process isn’t random, cheese makers use starter cultures of bacteria to control the ripening process. The bitterness problems don’t appear until the very end when a cheese is in its aging stage, which can take anywhere from 0-90 days. During this aging process, casein proteins (one of the main proteins in milk and therefore cheese) are being broken down into smaller peptides and it’s during this step that bitterness can arise. Even though this bitter cheese problem has been widely reported for decades (probably centuries), there are many different hypotheses about what causes the bitterness. Some say it might be the concentration of peptides, while others believe it’s a result of the starter culture used, and a third school of thought is that it’s the specific types of peptides. Paige is trying to bring some clarity to this problem by focusing on the bitterness that might be coming from the peptides.

To accomplish this work, Paige will be making lots of mini cheeses from different starter cultures, then aging them and extracting the peptides from the cheese to investigate the peptide profiles through genome sequencing. Scaling down the size of the cheeses will allow Paige to investigate starter cultures in isolation as well as in combination with different strains to see how this may affect peptide profiles, and therefore potentially bitterness.

*Some of the mini cheeses Paige makes for her research*

Besides Paige’s research in cheese, we will also be discussing her background which also features lots of dairy! As a Minnesotan, Paige grew up surrounded by the best of the best dairy. In fact, her grandparents owned and ran a dairy farm, where Paige spent many of her summers and holidays. Her passion for food science was solidified when she started working as an organic farmer during her senior year of high school and she hasn’t ever looked back. Join us on Sunday, April 16^th at 7 pm live on 88.7 FM or on the live stream. Missed the live show? You can listen to the recorded episode on your preferred podcast platform!

Diving into the Unknown: Exploring the Role of Viruses in Coral Reef Health

When you think of a coral reef, what do you picture? Perhaps you imagine colorful branching structures jutting out of rock and the sea floor, with flourishing communities of fish swimming about. Or if you’ve been paying attention to news about global warming for the past decade or two, maybe you picture desolate expanses of bleached corals, their bone-like structures eerily reminiscent of a mass graveyard.

What you might not picture is a zoomed-in view of the coral ecosystem: the multitude of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and algae that occupy the intricate crevices of every coral. While corals are indeed animals in their own right, they belong to a complex symbiotic relationship with these microorganisms: the algae, which are more specifically dinoflagellates, provide energy to the coral through the process of photosynthesis. Bacteria occupying the mucus layers cycle nutrients and play a role in defense against pathogen invasion through the production of antimicrobial peptides.

One lesser-known member of this community, or the coral ‘holobiont’ as it is called, are the viruses. It’s probable that, like other members of the holobiont, they contribute to the health of the coral in some way, but this role is as of yet unclear. Our guest this week is Emily Schmeltzer, a fifth year PhD student in the Vega Thurber lab in the Department of Microbiology, and these elusive viruses are exactly what she is trying to uncover.

*Emily Schmeltzer*, *PhD candidate in Rebecca Vega-Thurber’s lab, takes a sample of a coral*

“We don’t know a ton about viruses on coral reefs,” says Schmeltzer. “ We know that some probably cause disease or mortality through infections, but we don’t really know exactly what a lot of them are doing, because marine viral ecology is such a relatively new field,” she explains.

It’s not surprising: viruses, while the most abundant and diverse entity on earth, are incredibly tiny and difficult to detect in environments where other organisms also thrive. Part of the challenge is that they have no universally conserved genes: that is, no easy way to tell the genes from viruses apart from the genes of other organisms. When studying bacteria, a gene called the 16S rRNA gene can be used as a sort of ‘name tag’ – every bacteria has this gene, whereas other organisms do not. There’s no such thing for viruses, making them difficult to study if you don’t already know what you’re looking for.

Schmeltzer is studying the viruses that live on corals and their response to climate change. To do this, her PhD research has involved a massive spatiotemporal study (spatio = across different locations, temporal = across multiple time points) looking at nearly 400 individual coral colonies of three different species over 3 years. All of these colonies are off the coast of the Moorea, a small island in French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The ultimate goal of the project is to contribute to the ongoing data collection for the Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research project, and to characterize virus community diversity and potential function in the health of these corals.

Studying coral reefs is a big leap for Schmeltzer, who hails from the land-locked deserts of New Mexico. She was always interested in biology, which she attributes to her dad bringing home dead scorpions to look at together when she was a child. Arthropods ultimately ended up becoming her first research subjects: as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, she worked in an insect and spider taxonomy lab, before pivoting to working on West Nile virus.

So how did this insect-loving desert-dweller end up studying viruses that live on corals in the ocean? To learn more about Schmeltzer’s career trajectory, her love of corals, and the challenges of viral research, tune in to Inspiration Dissemination this Sunday, April 2nd at 7 PM. Listen live at 88.7 FM or on the live stream, or catch the episode after the show wherever you get your podcasts!

Local Game Developer and OSU Alumni Leads Second Annual TTRPG Fundraiser to Support Trans Advocacy Groups in Florida

Rue Dickey (they/he) is a returning guest to ID this week. You may remember Rue from last year as the organizer who helped raise over $400,000 for two trans rights organizations in Texas via Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPGs). Well, they’re back at it this year and we’re here to tell you all about it!

In February, 2022 Texas governor Greg Abbott called for teachers and members of the public to report parents of transgender children to authorities, equating providing support and medical care for trans youth to child abuse. This combined with a climate of increasing anti-trans legislation across the US, led Rue to take action. Rue is an Oregon State University alumnus and a freelance game developer, designing games for Hitpoint Press, Cobalt Press, and publishing independent work on game hosting platforms such as itch.io. Wanting to do something to help children and transgender people living in Texas, Rue decided to turn his passion for TTRPGs into a fundraiser. The online indie game hosting platform itch.io has been used in the past to create fundraisers for charities by bundling together and selling games. A few of Rue’s friends who run a BIPOC tabletop server have had experience with creating profit-sharing bundles using the platform in the past, so after he consulted them and walked through the steps, he set up a bundraiser. By the time of our interview with Rue in April, 2022 they had raised over $400,000 for TENT (Transgender Education Network of Texas, a trans-led group that works to combat misinformation on the community level through the corporate level, offering workshops as well as emergency relief funds for trans folks in need) and OLTT (Organización Latina Trans in Texas, a Latina trans woman-led organization focusing on transgender immigrants in Texas, assisting with the legal processes of immigration, name changes, and paperwork.) In addition to this they had been interviewed by several national news outlets, including NBC, Gizmodo, and The Mary Sue, as well as gaming-centric websites like Polygon, Dicebreaker, and GamesHub.

*Rue is a 2019 graduate of OSU’s Communications and Microbiology programs.*

This year Rue is continuing the fundraiser, but focusing on Florida which has garnered national attention for anti-trans legislation such as the Parental Rights in Education Act, which restricts schools from including LGBTQ+ topics in curricula. The proposed expanded provisions to the act would ban teachers from addressing students by pronouns that differ from those they were assigned at birth, and staff would also be unable to share their own preferred pronouns if they deviate from those assigned at birth. Additionally, the Florida Board of Medicine enacted a rule that bars minors from starting puberty blockers or hormone therapy, essentially banning transition for those under the age of 18.

The organizations benefiting from the bundraiser this year are Zebra Youth Coalition (a network serving youth ages 13-24, that run shelters for youth that need safety and resources) and Transinclusive Group (a trans women of color-led coalition aimed at offering peer support, access to resources like HRT, and educating care providers in how to better take care of trans youth.) The current bundle launched on March 13th and has 505 game supplements and zines, the base price of which is $5 but the top donation is $1000. The fundraising goal for this year’s bundle is $250k, but in the couple of weeks since launching there’s already been $208k raised.

The bundle is live through April 6th, so there is still time to help reach their fundraising goal! To learn more about the fundraiser, tune into Rue’s episode this upcoming Sunday, March 26th at 7 PM! Be sure to listen live on KBVR 88.7FM, or download the podcast if you missed it.

Grouper groupie: studying climate change and the Nassau grouper

During winter months, a few days after the full moon, thousands of fish make their way to the warm tropical waters off the west coast of Little Cayman, Cayman Island. Nassau Grouper are typically territorial and don’t interact often, but once per year, they gather in the same spot where they all spawn to carry on the tradition of releasing gametes, in the hopes that some of them will develop to adulthood and carry on the population.

Our guest this week is Janelle Layton, a Masters (and soon to be PhD) student in Dr. Scott Heppel’s lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. Janelle’s research focuses on this grouper, which is listed as near threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Overfishing has been the largest threat to Nassau Grouper populations, but another threat looms: warming waters due to climate change. This threat is what Janelle is interested in studying – how does the warming water temperature affect the growth and development of grouper larvae?

Each winter Janelle travels to this aggregation site in the Cayman Islands, where these large groups of grouper (grouper groups?) aggregate for a few days to reproduce. During this time, she collects thousands of fertilized Nassau Grouper eggs to take back to the lab and study. These eggs will develop in varying water temperatures for 6 days, where each day a subset of samples are preserved for future analysis.

So far, Janelle is finding that the larvae raised in higher temperatures tend to demonstrate not only an increase in mortality, but an increase in variability in mortality. What does this mean? Basically, eggs from some females are able to survive and develop under these stressful conditions better than eggs from other females – so is there a genetic component to being able to survive these temperature increases?

The answer may lie in proteins

Aside from development and mortality, Janelle is investigating this theory by measuring the expression of heat shock proteins in the fertilized eggs and larvae. Heat shock proteins are expressed in response to environmental stressors such as increased temperatures, and can be measured through RNA sequencing. The expression of these proteins might hold the key to understanding why some grouper are more likely to survive than others. Janelle’s work is a collaborative effort between Oregon State University, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Reef Environmental Education Foundation and the Cayman Islands Department of Environment.

To learn more about Nassau Grouper, heat shock proteins, and what it’s like being a Black woman in marine science, tune into Janelle’s episode this upcoming Sunday, March 12th at 7 PM! Be sure to listen live on KBVR 88.7FM, or download the podcast if you missed it. You can also catch Janelle on TikTok or at her website.

Finicky Fish: Investigating the impact of dams on the John Day White Sturgeon

This week we have a Fisheries and Wildlife Master’s student and ODFW employee, Gabriella Brill, joining us to discuss her research investigating the impact of dams on the movement and reproduction habits of the White Sturgeon here in Oregon. Much like humans, these fish can live up to 100 years and can take 25 years to fully mature. But the similarities stop there, as they can also grow up to 10 ft long, haven’t evolved much in 200 million years, and can lay millions of eggs at a time (makes the Duggar family’s 19 Kids and Counting not seem so bad).

Despite being able to lay millions of eggs at a time, the White Sturgeon will only do so if the conditions are right. This fish Goldilocks’ its way through the river systems, looking for a river bed that’s just right. If it doesn’t like what it sees, the fish can just choose not to lay the eggs and will wait for another year. When the fish don’t find places they want to lay their eggs, it can cause drastic changes to the overall population size. This can be a problem for people whose lives are intertwined with these fish: such as fishermen and local Tribal Nations (and graduate students).

The white sturgeon was once a prolific fish in the Columbia River and holds ceremonial significance to local Tribal Nations, however, post-colonialization a fishery was established in 1888 that collapsed the population just four years later in 1892. Due to the long lifespan of these fish, the effects of that fishery are something today’s populations have still not fully recovered from.

Image of white sturgeon in a river. It is a large bluish grey fish. The river is a murkey dark green color. — White Sturgeon

Can you hear me now

Gabriella uses sound transmitters to track the white sturgeon’s movements. Essentially, the fish get a small sound-emitting implant that is picked up by a series of receivers – as long the receivers don’t get washed away by a strong current. By monitoring the fish’s journey through the river systems, she can then determine if the man-made dams are impacting their ability to find a desirable place to lay eggs.

Journey to researching a sturgeon’s journey

Gabriella always gravitated towards ecology due to the ways it blends many different sciences and ideas – and Fish are a great system for studying ecology. She started with studying Salmon in undergrad which eventually led to a position with the ODFW. Working with the ODFW inspired her to get a Master’s degree so that she could gain the necessary experience and credentials to be a more effective advocate for changes in conservation efforts that are being made. One way to get clout in the fish world: study a highly picky fish with a long life cycle. Challenge accepted.

Gabriella Brill holding a smaller sturgeon while on a boat.

To hear more about these finicky fish be sure to listen live on Sunday February 26th at 7PM on 88.7FM, or download the podcast.

Global swarming: getting robot swarms to perform intelligently

This week we have a robotics PhD student, Everardo Gonzalez, joining us to discuss his research on coordinating robots with artificial intelligence (AI). That doesn’t mean he dresses them up in matching bow ties (sadly), but instead he works on how to get a large collective of robots, also called a swarm, to work collectively towards a shared goal.

Why should we care about swarming robots?

Aside from the potential for an apocalyptic robot world domination, there are actually many applications for this technology. Some are just as terrifying. It could be applied to fully automated warfare – reducing accountability when no one is to blame for pulling the trigger (literally).

However, it could also be used to coordinate robots used in healthcare and with organizing fleets of autonomous vehicles, potentially making our lives, and our streets, safer. In the case of the fish-inspired Blue Bots, this kind of coordinated robot system can also help us gather information about our oceans as we try to resolve climate change.

Depiction of how the fish-inspired Blue Bots can observe their surroundings in a shared aquatic space, then send that information and receive feedback from the computer system. Driving the Blue Bots’ behavior is a network model, as depicted in the Agent A square.

#Influencer

Having a group of intelligent robots behaving intelligently sounds like it’s a problem of quantity, however, it’s not that simple. These bots can also suffer from there being “too many cooks in the kitchen”, and, if all bots in the swarm are intelligent, they can start to hinder each other’s progress. Instead, the swarm needs both a few leader bots, that are intelligent and capable of learning and trying new things, along with follower bots, which can learn from their leader. Essentially, the bots play a game of “Follow the Leaders”.

All robots receive feedback with respect to a shared objective, which is typical of AI training and allow the bots to infer which behaviors are effective. In this case, the leaders will get additional feedback on how well they are influencing their followers.

Unlike social media, one influencer with too many followers is a bad thing – and the bots can become ineffective. There’s a famous social experiment in which actors in a busy New York City street stopped to stare at a window to determine if strangers would do the same. If there are not enough actors staring at the window, strangers are unlikely to respond. But as the number of actors increases, the likeness of a stranger stopping to look will also increase. The bot swarms also have an optimal number of leaders required to have the largest influence on their followers. Perhaps we’re much more like robots than the Turing test would have us believe.

Dot to dot

We’re a long way from intelligent robot swarms, though, as Everardo is using simplified 2D particle simulations to begin to tackle this problem. In this case the particles replace the robots, and are essentially just dots (rodots?) in a shared environment that only has two dimensions. The objectives or points of interest for these dot bots are more dots! Despite these simplifications, translating system feedback into a performance review for the leaders is still a challenging problem to solve computationally. Everardo starts by asking the question “what if the leader had not been there”, but then you have to ask “what if the followers that followed that leader did something else?” and then you’ve opened a can of worms reminiscent of Smash Mouth where the “what if”’s start coming and they don’t stop coming.

What if you wanted to know more about swarming robots? Be sure to listen live on Sunday February 26th at 7PM on 88.7FM, or download the podcast if you missed it. To learn a bit more about Everardo’s work with swarms and all things robotics, check out his portfolio at everardog.github.io.