Due to some unforeseen circumstances, we had a very impromptu guest join us for our show on February 18th. Rachel Kaplan is a 4th year PhD student in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, who researchers whales and krill around the world to better understand predator-prey dynamics. Part of her PhD research involves going to Antarctica so we sat down with Rachel to chat about what it’s like conducting field work on the coldest continent on Earth!
You can listen to the episode anywhere you listen to your podcasts, including on KBVR, Spotify, Apple, or anywhere else!
Did you know that jellyfish are plankton? That’s right, they’re not just abstruse microscopic organisms (although many of them are). For example, did you know that the size difference between plankton members is on an order of magnitude similar to the size of a human compared to the size of Earth? These are just a few of the fun plankton facts our upcoming guest has in store for us.
Elena Conser is a third year PhD student in the Plankton Ecology Lab. She really, really, loves plankton – marine organisms that are unable to swim against the current and are thus, at the whim and mercy of their environment (of which Elena attributes a sort of philosophical solace in). More specifically, she looks at zooplankton, animals that live in the plankton. These organisms form the basis of marine food webs, and Elena’s research aims to better understand planktonic communities and their food webs. She does this off the coast of Oregon, in an oceanographic region called the ‘Northern Californian Current’. This area is extremely productive for plankton growth and supports several economically important fisheries. It is also characterized by upwelling and periods of low oxygen, prompting Elena to investigate the structure of zooplankton communities here and how they may shift in response to environmental change.
To study plankton, Elena employs cutting-edge technology off large research vessels. She uses an imaging system known as ‘ISIIS’ (In-Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System) to view plankton in their natural environment, something that has not previously been possible in her field. The data collected with this system is processed using deep learning and computer vision to capture and identify plankton. Through this, Elena is also able to attain information on what plankton are where, how big they are, and how many there are. Elena couples her imagery data from ISIIS with biological samples of ichthyoplankton (larval fish), collected at different depths using nets. Using the ear bones (known as ‘otoliths’) from these physical samples, she can age larval fish much like how trees can be dated through their rings. She does this on English sole, a common flatfish occurring in the Northern California Current, to better understand the development from larval to juvenile stage.
Elena always knew of the importance of the ocean, which led her to studying marine science, biology, and applied math at the University of Miami in Florida. Here she worked with a larval fish scientist and became curious about the importance of plankton communities. This curiosity led her back to her roots in Oregon to pursue plankton research with developing technology. Her research is indeed at the intersection of oceanography, ecology, and computer science. She is excited to continue tackling questions that have never been able to be answered until now. To hear more on the importance of plankton and the interesting questions Elena is asking, tune in to KBVR 88.7 FM this Sunday, February 25th, or shortly thereafter where you get your podcasts!
“The individual who grows up in this culture has a strong feeling of fatalism, helplessness, dependence and inferiority” says Oscar Lewis, expounding upon his theory of the “Culture of Poverty” in a 1966 essay. According to Lewis, people who grow up in poverty take on a particular mindset of hopelessness that pervades every aspect of their lives. Elliot Laurence (he/they), our next guest, largely sees the “Culture of Poverty” as a myth and seeks to tell stories that express a broader view of being poor in America. Elliot is a first year Master of Fine Arts student in creative writing and fiction, who draws on his own experience of growing up in poverty and continued financial precarity as a source of inspiration for writing.
Elliot says he is most inspired by people who “make it work”, such as single parents managing to make rent from paycheck to paycheck and overworked social services providers. Harmful stereotypes of poor people often suggest that they are lazy and content to live off government assistance. But as Elliot points out, the tangle of paperwork and compliance that the American welfare state imposes on the poor is anything but a cushy lifestyle. So too are the ways that poor families must make ends meet. One of Elliot’s short stories centers around a young child from a poor family who collects aluminum cans and bottles to exchange at the recycling center for meager sums of money. They want to depict everyday moments like this to push back against the common representation of poverty as something to gawk at, as exemplified in media like “The Florida Project” and “Shameless”. As he sees it, poverty fiction could be any genre, including sci-fi or fantasy, with background themes of material insecurity setting the scene.
Elliot’s personal story is interwoven deeply in his approach to writing. Born to a single mother in St. Louis, Missouri as the second of five children, he grew up playing an older sibling role. Elliot joined the Air Force at the age of 17, following the well-worn pipeline from poor neighborhoods to the military. Elliot is transgender, and years of trans activism in the hostile environment of Missouri later attracted him to the more accepting Pacific Northwest. He continues to be a guardian for his teenage sister, all while balancing the MFA curriculum, a teaching assistant position, and jobs as a daycare worker and Doordasher.
To hear excerpts from his writing and about how his identity as a mixed-race, transgender veteran has informed his fiction, tune in this Sunday, February 11th at 7PM on KBVR 88.7 FM or shortly thereafter wherever you get your podcasts!
Jose Aguilar is not here to help robots take over the world. In fact, the first year PhD student studying artificial intelligence says he’s actually working on the opposite–to ensure that AI systems are safe, and raise alarm when they’re not.
Aguilar’s research focuses on the theoretical and applied aspects of safe AI. In the theoretical realm, he tries to ensure probabilistically that a model is going to be safe. When that algorithm or model is used in a situation–like autonomous vehicles, for example–his work moves over to the application side.
And we really need safe AI! Listen to Selene and Jenna’s conversation with Jose to learn more about safe artificial intelligence and how Jose’s background of growing up in Mexico and moving to Oklahoma brought him to OSU.
