Monthly Archives: April 2015

Forestry Forensics 101

Look out tropical tree thieves! Beware, Pacific pine pilferers! Kristen Finch is on the case!

Sunday April 26, Kristen joined the hosts of Inspiration Dissemination to discuss her study of wood chemistry in Douglas Fir. Kristen’s love of leafy things began in 7th grade when she realized that polyploid strawberries with more than two sets of chromosomes are really big and juicy. This amazed her, because whereas the strawberries benefit from this genetic disposition, a human being would probably die from it!

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Kristen’s admiration of the plant kingdom led her to study Ponderosa Pines with her undergraduate mentor and OSU alum, Dr. Ann Willyard. After completing her degree in biology at Hendrix College in Arkansas, Kristen took some time to find out what kind of research she wanted to do in botany by interning at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden. Extracting DNA from Caribbean Mahogany, a process that can take up to ten days, gave her a sense of appreciation for other potential methods of analysis.

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Kristen Finch on ID this Sunday, April 26th!

On the show this Sunday at 7pm will be Kristen Finch of the Botany and Plant Pathology Department. Kristen studies the wood chemistry of Douglas Fir and its correlation to genetic relatedness, she will be talking about TIMBER THEFT as well as her journey into forestry science! Tune in to 88.7 KBVR Corvallis to find out more!

Inspiration Dissemination Will Return!

Dear Stalwart Supporters of Inspiration Dissemination (and people who are here accidentally)…

Welcome to the new and long overdue Inspiration Dissemination website! Beginning April 26th  ID will return to the airwaves from a shiny new studio in the Student Experience Center!

(edit: we had previously hoped to go back on the air on the 19th, but DJ training schedules with the new equipment prohibited this)

For those who have stumbled upon this blog or otherwise don’t know, Inspiration Dissemination is a live radio show hosted by Zhian Kamvar and Matt McConnell on 88.7 FM KBVR. ID allows graduate students at Oregon State to tell their stories, connect with the community, and share their passion and research with Corvallis and the greater Linn-Benton area!

This blog is intended to serve as the main portal to ID related everything. Expect weekly blog entries summarizing the content of episodes, as well as access to archived mp3s of many episodes from the past three years of glorious inspiration!

If you are a graduate student here at Oregon State and you’re interested in coming on the show, please contact us at inspirationdissemination@gmail.com, and of course you can reach us on Facebook, Twitter (@kbvrID), and as always, be sure to tune in Sunday evenings at 7pm to hear about the research and personal journeys of graduate students right here at OSU, live on 88.7 KBVR Corvallis!

– Zhian and Matt