Monthly Archives: May 2018

Agroforestry: any takers?

Agroforestry, the practice of growing crops or tending livestock while purposefully managing trees on the same parcel of land, can provide security of fuel wood and food in rural areas of the developing world. Increased access to healthcare in many African countries has spurred population growth over the past couple of decades. Malnourishment remains a problem, and as the number of people per acre of farmland increases, maintaining food security may require changes in agricultural practices.

As a second-year PhD student in the Forest Ecosystems and Society department in the College of Forestry, Sonia Bruck knows this isn’t a simple task. Communities around the world who are exposed to agroforestry practices tend to adopt them at low rates, which often depend on residents’ wealth and education. Working with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), a non-governmental organization in Kenya, Sonia will travel to the town of Mbola in the Uyui district of eastern Tanzania in September. She will be living there for seven months, examining how and why these and other factors might play a role in how people decide to adopt agroforestry practices. A Tanzanian regional office of ICRAF has already promoted the intercropping of pigeon pea and cassava with Gliricidia sepium (a nitrogen fixing tree), but despite this being a biologically sound strategy, it hasn’t caught on among everyone in Mbola. So if there are cultural or socioeconomic barriers to adopting these techniques, she wants to know about them.

An agroforestry system in North Carolina – Longleaf pine alley cropping, where corn and soybeans were alternated near an open agricultural field.

Knowing that wealthier villagers are able to place more risk into implementing a new agroforestry technique might be only one facet. Health, household division of labor, number of children per household, and access to food may also factor into whether people decide to adopt this strategy. Sonia is developing a quantitative survey to gather data like these, and plans to administer it to 600 residents once she arrives in Mbola. She will then analyze the survey data and schedule focus groups to allow residents to provide more context, especially if there are relationships between variables that don’t seem to make sense. According to rational choice theory, we’re all rational actors – so Westerners like us might be missing important cultural preferences that could guide farmers’ agricultural decisions in rural Tanzania. Sonia hopes that her findings will help ICRAF target households that could benefit from implementing agroforestry.

(From left to right) Jeremais Mowo (Regional Coordinator for Eastern and Southern Africa), Sonia Bruck, and Badege Bishaw (her adviser) at ICRAF.

When Sonia departs for Tanzania, she certainly will not be a stranger to international travel. Her father, a professor of plant pathology, taught a field course in the Peruvian Amazon, and she first got to tag along as a fourteen-year-old. The heat, humidity, and occasional threat of vampire bats didn’t seem to deter her when she studied abroad for a summer in Brazil, as an undergraduate at Appalachian State University majoring in Sustainable Development and Environmental Studies. She has also traveled extensively across Central and South America, and recently to the Philippines, Thailand, and Nepal to catch up with friends stationed in the Peace Corps and learn more about local cultures.

Sonia near Silver Falls, Oregon

To hear more about Sonia’s research and experiences traveling and living abroad, be sure to tune in to KBVR Corvallis 88.7 FM this Sunday May, 27 at 7 pm, stream the live interview at kbvr.com/listen, or find it in podcast form next week on Apple Podcasts.

If you’re interested in participating in agroforestry in the Pacific Northwest please visit: http://pnwagro.forestry.oregonstate.edu/

A Space for Me

Minerva presenting at the Radical Imaginations Conference on the panel ” Feminist Radical Imaginations: Marches and Revolutions” with Andrea Haverkamp, Carolina Melchor, Maria Lenzi Miori, Minerva Zayas, and Nasim Basiri

Everyone handles their personal growth differently, and for many finding an identity category can lead to feelings of comfort and an opportunity to find community. However, for folks who identify with more than one category or find identity in LGBTQ+ categories may find difficulty navigating their identity in spaces that have been shaped by the heteronormative majority. Moreover, for people of color, retaining identity in their culture might add another layer of complexity to navigating the path to their goals. Our guest this week, Minerva Zayas a Master’s student in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, is interested in how folks who identify as LatinX and LGBTQ+ navigate the intersection of these identities, especially in university spaces. In particular, Minerva is asking how LatinX, LGBTQ+ individuals engage in a system that has historically catered to white heteronormative college students. Minerva, speaking from personal experience, expects that University life offers little tailored support systems for folks of color who identify as ‘other,’ but that a university campus might offer opportunities to build a support systems that other institutions might lack: the opportunity to participate in a campus cultural/lifestyle community and engage in activism.

Minerva presenting at Corvallis Poetics Open Mic Night on the poem, “My worst NightMare” at Interzone Inc.

Minerva participating in a creative photo session in downtown Corvallis, OR.

For her Master’s, Minerva will conduct interviews with LatinX, LGBTQ+ students and ask questions than run the gamut of identity in sexuality, culture, community, and activism. She hopes to highlight their experiences and examine themes that arise. In addition to her research, Minerva, a poet herself, plans to extend her project in a creative way, ideally through a podcast. After completing her Master’s, Minerva hopes to complete a PhD and has considered becoming a counselor for Spanish-speaking folks. This aim coincides with her mission to bring voice to folks who share identity with her in LatinX culture. Minerva ultimately wants institutions, academia and beyond, to be more inclusive and cognizant of minority identities, but she realizes that change comes from within. By pursuing her aspirations for a PhD and engaging in academia, she hopes that others who share her identity will be drawn to academia so that a system that has been shaped by the majority identity can grow to support all.

Tune in to KBVR Corvallis 88.7 FM this Sunday May, 20 at 7 pm to hear more about Minerva’s research and personal journey to graduate school. Listeners, local and otherwise, can stream the live interview at kbvr.com/listen or find the podcast of Minerva’s episode next week on Apple Podcasts.

 

Putting kids in the driver’s seat: How modified ride-on cars let kids with disabilities drive their own development

My mother often tells the story of when I first learned to walk: Instead of sluggishly taking one step at a time, I would quickly take five or six steps as I accelerated into the floor or surrounding walls — Bang! She says I learned to run before I would walk. Based on my old scars I think she’s right. Many families have memories of their children’s first steps.  But how about baby’s first drive?  This Sunday we interview Christina Hospodar, finishing her M.S. in Kinesiology with an option in Adapted Physical Activity, who is working to better understand how providing modified ride-on cars to children with disabilities as a source of mobility can help to close the developmental gaps between children with disabilities and their typically developing peers.

Throughout infancy and early childhood, movement is key to learning. Mobility at a young age allows children to begin exploring their surroundings, which helps with not only motor development, but also language, social, and cognitive skills. While crawling towards mom or chasing birds in the park may seem like that is all it is, these experiences are embedded with inherent learning opportunities; learning to move in and of itself is a learning opportunity! Once you can direct your own movement, this propels a cascade of cognitive advancements. For example, once babies begin walking and their hands become more available to explore objects, they begin bringing favorite toys or novel finds to parents, and consequentially hear more words as they engage in these social bids. Many developmental advancements arise following the ability to independently move through their environment, of course alongside many smiles and giggles.

Go Baby Go is a community-based outreach program that provides modified ride-on cars to children with disabilities as a source of self-directed mobility. By modifying the activation switch and adding more supportive seating with common materials such as PVC pipe, pool noodles, and foam kickboards, children with disabilities can use the ride-on cars as an accessible powered mobility device.

It is estimated that approximately 500,000 children in the United States have some sort of mobility limitation. Children under 5 report unmet mobility needs almost twice as often as older children, with 61% of families report that gaining access to a mobility aid is “difficult.” While some children may have a more clear limitation in their ability to walk around the house and knock cups off the table, there is also the undercover impact of potentially delayed cognitive, social, and language development. This “exploration gap” happens during formative years, when decreased movement may have far-reaching consequences on overall development. One solution is powered mobility. Parents can buy wheelchairs with a joystick so their children can move independently and at their own will. However, powered pediatric wheelchairs often cost upwards of $17,000, which even with (limited) insurance coverage, often makes these devices completely inaccessible. Further, no commercial device exists for children 2 and under, which denies access at an age which may have the most benefit. Not to mention the social stigma of using an assistive device, with even clinicians often viewing powered mobility as a “last resort.”

A more recent version of the modified ride-on car is called a Sit-to-Stand (STS) car. Here, there is a reverse-activated switch in the seat, so the child must pull to stand and remain standing in order to power the vehicle. This combines functional training with the experience of powered mobility.

That’s where the work of the Social Mobility Lab at Oregon State University comes back into the picture. Under the direction of Dr. Sam Logan, a large part of Christina and her lab group’s work revolves around Go Baby Go Oregon, one of about 75 national and international chapters. Started in 2012 at the University of Delaware by Dr, Cole Galloway, Go Baby Go is a community-based outreach program that provides modified ride-on cars to kids with disabilities as a source of self-directed mobility. With a total cost of around $200, the modified ride-on cars are affordable, portable, and perhaps most importantly, FUN. Ride-on cars can be purchased from standard box stores like Walmart or Toys R Us. Then, these cars are electrically and structurally modified to make them more user-friendly and accessible to any child. Most standard ride-on cars are operated by a foot pedal or very small button switch, so in order to make the vehicle more accessible to children with disabilities, they modify the electrical wiring by adding a large easy-to press activation switch. Now, the car will move via an oversized button on the steering wheel. They also reinforce the structure and support of the vehicle with PVC pipe and pool noodles so there are more soft-touch contact points to keep the child secure. Maybe the child has a vision impairment? They can make the steering wheel a very big and very colorful button. What if the child needs to be able to sit upright? They design a support system integrated into the car so the child can maintain an upright posture. The essence of being a kid is mostly about playing and exploration; this program and these devices are helping to make sure that all kids can be kids and get into just as much trouble as anybody else.

Christina’s work goes beyond the community-outreach sector of Go Baby Go. With Dr. Logan and lab mates, Christina is working to quantify the benefits of the modified ride-on cars and determine how they can be optimally used. Anecdotally, first drives are filled with big grins, happy dancing, and engaged attention. But how do you capture that in research?  Her Masters project aims to understand how use of the modified ride-on cars relate to tangible outcomes like onset of independent driving and independent walking. This intervention is unique in that researchers incorporated elements of physical therapy within the vehicles to sneakily have children practice motor skills. If you want children to practice standing, you have to incentivize that movement. By wiring a negative activation switch in the seat, the child must stand up in the car to move forward. When they sit down, the car stops moving. Therefore, the children practice pulling to stand and maintaining balance, physical therapy exercises that would be very difficult to get children to do without that positive incentive of freedom of movement provided by the car. Christina’s thesis focuses on a year-long progressive modified ride-on car intervention for infants with Down syndrome that utilizes the seated cars as well as this more advanced sit-to-stand version to encourage exploration and motor skill development. We will discuss her findings, which suggest that children who spent more time with the vehicles and were more consistent with usage potentially had better motor outcomes.

Adapted Physical Activity graduate students (from left to right: Michele Catena, Samantha Ross, and Christina Hospodar) presenting research from the Social Mobility Lab at the 2017 Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Conference in Austin, Texas.

As I write this on a sunny afternoon sitting on a bench overlooking the MU quad, there are seniors taking graduation photos and families meandering through the courtyard. One family walks by the pair of 120-feet tall incense cedar trees. The little sister walks off the pavement and onto the grass, tracing the perimeter of the wide droopy branches. She stops. Looks up and down in awe, wonder, and amazement. Maybe she’ll be a forester someday, perhaps a botanist, or maybe an ornithologist with all the noisy bird conversations happening way up high in the canopy. But in a snap, her parents turn around and wave her to return. She sprints back towards the group. Because of her ability to freely explore her environment, life has left her with a new seed of curiosity. This embodies the spirit of Go Baby Go, where self-directed mobility is a fundamental human right.

Be sure to listen to the interview on Sunday May 13th at 7PM on KBVR 88.7 Corvallis or you can listen live online. Christina is nice enough to do the interview the day before her defense so if you’re interested you can see her research talk on Monday May 14 at 2 PM in  Hallie Ford Center room 115. In the fall Christina will be moving onto a PhD program at NYU in the Cognition and Perception program within the Psychology Department. There, she will study infant motor development under the direction of Dr. Karen Adolph.

If you want to find out more about the Go Baby Go program, you can look at Oregon State’s Chapter page, the greater Oregon Facebook page, and the national website to look for contacts or access to local sites around the US.

Comunicación Científica con Franco

Kristen Finch interviewing Francisco Guerrero for this special episode. (Photo by Adrian Gallo)

This week on Inspiration Dissemination we will be featuring a previous guest: Francisco Guerrero, a PhD student in the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources, and Management. Francisco’s first interview aired on October 18, 2015, and we called him back for a follow-up because he has been selected for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship. As a fellow, Franco will be writing feature stories about climate change and health for CNN en Español. Part of the fellowship will involve helping with film production, as well. FUN FACT last time Franco was on the show, he told us that he always wanted to be a movie producer. Franco will take this amazing opportunity during the final push for his PhD research to enhance his science communication skills and gain experience in production and video broadcasting.

This special interview will begin at 6:30 pm on May 6, 2018. We will be asking Franco about the application process, his responsibilities as a fellow, and his goals for the fellowship. After our interview with Franco, we will rebroadcast his first interview on Inspiration Dissemination at 7 pm.

Tune in to KBVR Corvallis 88.7 FM at 6:30 pm to hear about the AAAS Fellowship and learn about Franco’s research in the College of Forestry. Not a local listener? No sweat! Stream the show live on line or hear the podcast next week.

Franco wants to hear from you! Tweet him with ideas for CNN Español, specifically stories about Climate Change and Health. 

The folks behind the episode: Francisco Guerrero, Kristen Finch, and Lillian Padgitt-Cobb. (Photo by Adrian Gallo)