Native English speakers enjoy a distinct privilege in academic publishing due to the outsize impact of the English language on global publishing and media. But how has the dominance of English impacted the research of non-native speakers? What is the role for non-English language scholarship, particularly in the post-colonial era? These are some of the questions that Danlu Yang, our next guest, investigates in her graduate research.

Danlu is a second year master’s student and anthropologist in the Applied Anthropology Graduate Program at OSU, working with Prof. Shaozeng Zhang. Her main subject of study is a collaborative project dedicated to translating anthropological research between Chinese and Portuguese. Contributors to this project come from four countries and include anthropologists, editors, and other researchers and community members . Danlu is conducting an ethnographic study of the people involved in this translation project. She is herself highly multilingual, able to speak Chinese, English, Portuguese and Spanish. This gives her a unique vantage point to document how individuals produce and transfer knowledge across cultures and languages. Danlu is also interested in what motivates anthropologists to study rural China and what is gained when local knowledge is able to be expressed without English as an intermediary.

To hear more about Danlu’s experiences and personal background, visit her Linkedin profile and tune in Apr 28th at 7PM to KBVR 88.7 FM or wherever you get your podcasts!

30 by 30. No, not the critically acclaimed ESPN documentary series — the phrase refers to the Biden Administration’s goal for the US to produce 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power generation by 2030. To support this target, large scale construction projects are planned off the coast of Oregon and the rest of the West Coast. Here to tell us about the potential effects of this planned construction on marine life is our guest this week, Margaret Campbell.

Margaret is an MS student in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences on fisheries working with Prof. Will White on population dynamics.  She uses theoretical and historical modeling approaches to forecast the impact of wind farm infrastructure on fisheries. One such model quantifies offshore parcels in terms of their distance from high-quality fish habitats and projects the redistribution of fish biomass when particular parcels are closed for construction. Margaret also employs a species distribution model to predict the population dynamics of fish like ling cod, yellowtail rockfish, and dover sole. She compares the predictions with fishing industry logbooks and oceanic sensors. Numerous environmental, tribal, and commercial groups have an interest in wind farm placement and Margaret hopes that her research will help these stakeholders respond to a changing coastline.

Before coming to OSU, Margaret attended the University of Maine, where she was involved with the NOAA Sea Grant program and earned a bachelor’s in marine science and history. She has gained experiences in diverse areas of marine biology, including estuary surveys, otolith analysis, phycology, and aquaculture. To hear more about her research and offshore wind generally, tune in to KBVR 88.7 this Sunday or listen wherever 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 11^th at 7PM on KBVR 88.7 FM or shortly thereafter wherever you get your podcasts!

Our next guest is Lauren Diaz, a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Fisheries , Wildlife and Conservation Sciences. Lauren is advised by Prof. Jim Peterson and focuses on the population dynamics of freshwater organisms.

Lauren studies rainbow trout, a widespread salmonid with important ties to recreational fishing and a complex life trajectory. The salmonid family of fish includes large species like Chinook salmon that are ecologically important food sources for both marine and terrestrial species including humans. Trout eggs hatch in freshwater but some juveniles undergo significant physiological changes and spend a large portion of their lifespan in the ocean before returning to the rivers to spawn. This ‘anadromous’ form of rainbow trout is called steelhead.

Lauren uses the Stanislaus River in California’s Central valley as a model system for understanding the impact of dams on the life histories of trout. The prominence of agriculture in the Central Valley has left its watersheds full of dams, irrigation systems and other human diversions. Monitoring fish populations throughout this complex network can be challenging due to a lack of standardization in monitoring systems. In response to this uncertainty, Lauren turns to computer simulations to shed light on the population dynamics of rainbow trout. Specifically, her simulations model the decision-making of individual fish in response to environmental stimuli. Lauren tweaks assumptions of the model such as the typical responses of trout to water depth, prey density, other fish, and tree coverage. In this way, population-level patterns emerge from a set of interpretable individual-level rules. Of particular interest to Lauren is the rate at which fish remain in the stream rather than becoming steelhead. Some preliminary evidence suggests that reduced seasonal fluctuations of water levels due to climate change could be suppressing the relative share of steelhead. 

Lauren grew up in Miami, Florida, a place where encounters with tropical wildlife are part of everyday life. She was fascinated by reptiles and amphibians and became known as the “animal person” within her family and eventually studied herpetology during her undergraduate career at the University of Florida and a master’s degree at Clemson. An interest in hellbender salamanders, which live alongside rainbow trout in cool freshwater streams, led her to pursue the PhD at Oregon State. To hear more about her journey and research, tune in to KBVR 88.7 FM on Sunday, January 28^th or shortly thereafter wherever you get your podcasts!

Our next guest is Matt Vaughan, a third year PhD student in Integrative Biology working with Prof. Sarah Henkel in the Benthic Ecology Lab. Matt originally hails from Melbourne, Australia and recently joined the ID team as a host. A major theme of his research interest is biological “disturbance and change”, meaning the impact of stressors on organisms and ecosystems.

Matt’s PhD research centers around invertebrate life found on the ocean floor, known to researchers as the “Benthic zone”. He focuses especially on ghost shrimp, a type of crustacean that builds burrows on the ocean floor. In the Pacific Northwest, ghost shrimp have historically inhabited estuaries, the areas where rivers flow into the sea. Within the last decade however, a significant population of ghost shrimp has arisen much farther than expected for the species, more than seven miles off the coast of Oregon and southern Washington. This mysterious colonization could have been spurred by environmental disruptions such as climate change, and the shrimp also represent a significant change in the local ecology of the ocean floor. Firstly, ghost shrimp burrows alter the habitat for preexisting invertebrate species, reducing stability on the seafloor. The large and intricate burrows are often in high densities, and the sand they kick up through their bioturbation can affect the survival and behavior of invertebrates like bivalves. Ghost shrimp burrows also oxygenate the sediment and host vibrant microbial communities, together altering the biogeochemistry of the ocean floor.

Matt studies these ecological dynamics by surveying the ocean floor during boat trips out of Newport. His team samples the bed using box cores to collect, identify and count the invertebrates. Matt then uses computational and statistical analysis to characterize the population structure of these areas, particularly seeking to tease out the differences in species distribution between areas with and without ghost shrimp burrows. Ghost shrimp are also relatively large compared to other invertebrates in the area, so their arrival provides a significant potential food source for larger marine life like sturgeon and even gray whales. In the rest of his PhD, Matt hopes to model this trophic impact in the long term.

To hear more about Matt’s research and how his travels to the Great Barrier Reef and Southeast Asia helped him discover his love for science, tune into KBVR 88.7 tonight at 7pm or listen soon after wherever you get your podcasts.

We have a special guest this week on Inspiration Dissemination, our own Dr. Grace Deitzler (she/they) who is graduating this term with a PhD in Microbiology! Grace was on an episode of ID earlier in her degree and has served as a host since 2021. In this episode, we will mostly cover the remainder of Grace’s PhD work and give them a send-off both from OSU and from ID.

In the early part of her PhD, Grace worked on mice models of autism and examined the effects of bacterial infection on autism-like behaviors. Since then, her research has focused on a much different species – honeybees. A connective thread between these two disparate phases of research is the “double-hit hypothesis”. This refers to the idea that two concurrent stressors on an organism can increase vulnerability to or severity of disease, beyond the impact of either stressor individually. In mice, the two stressors were a simulated maternal infection during gestation and a subsequent infection of the offspring. In honeybees, the double-hit of interest to Grace is treatment with probiotics after an infection, in this case by a microsporidian fungus.

In comparison with mice or humans, honeybees have a very homogeneous microbiome, with just 8-10 bacterial species accounting for around 95% of the total. The minimalism of the honeybee microbiome and its conservation across individuals suggests that the insect and its bacteria have co-evolved for millions of years. As pollinators, honeybees are of vast ecological and economic importance, with $20 billion in agricultural activity sustained by managed colonies in the US. Beekeepers are understandably interested in protecting their colonies from infection by pathogens such as fungi and foreign bacteria. Much like the probiotic shakes marketed for human consumption, companies have developed probiotic products for honeybees and marketed them towards keepers.

Grace’s research findings cast this practice into doubt. They exposed the pupae to Nosema, a common fungal pathogen that targets the bees’ gut. Then they treated some bees with probiotics. Somewhat counterintuitively, infected individuals treated with probiotics died more quickly than those not fed probiotics! Premature death due to probiotic administration was even observed among healthy bees not exposed to the pathogen. This surprising result spurred Grace to investigate possible mechanisms for probiotic-induced mortality. The Nosema infection damages the bee’s microbiome, eliminating many species from the gut. Grace found that although the probiotic partially restores some of these bacterial species, it leads to more subtle disequilibria in the microbiome at the level of specific bacterial strains. She hypothesizes that this imbalance induces stress that is enough to worsen the bee’s ability to survive. Their results also raise questions about the efficacy of current honeybee probiotics, which appear to do more harm than good. After final analyses are complete, these results will be available in a forthcoming paper.

To hear more about the details of bees and bacteria as well as Grace’s experiences in science communication, tune in this Sunday, June 11^th, at 7PM on 88.7 KBVR. 

This week’s guest is Alexander Butcher, a second-year master’s student in the Department of Crop and Soil Science. Alexander has a wide variety of interests related to minimizing food waste and improving global food security, but his current research focuses on protecting potato crops from insect pests.

Typical chemical pesticides are effective deterrents against invading insects but can cause significant harm to the environment and to humans. Such substances can present health risks to the farm workers that apply the pesticides as well as the consumers who purchase and eat the treated crops. Runoff from agriculture can also cause damage to surrounding ecosystems. In light of these downsides, scientists are interested in finding safer alternatives to conventional pesticides. Alexander studies an alternative class of chemicals called elicitors, which act as signals to activate defense mechanisms of plants. Plants have evolved numerous chemical and structural defenses for fending off insect and microbial attackers as well as competing against other plant species. One such product of this evolutionary arms race is the caffeine that you might enjoy in your morning cup of coffee. Elicitors can selectively turn these defenses on or off. This gives farmers and plant breeders a lot more possibilities for using plant defenses to manage insects.

Alexander’s research focuses on potatoes, which are an important agricultural product in northeastern Oregon along the Washington border. One of the biggest insect pests of potato is the Colorado potato beetle. Alexander is testing strategies for using two synthetic chemical analogs of natural plant signal hormones– salicylic acid and jasmonic acid — to stimulate the natural defenses of potato plants. Jasmonic acid is a phytohormone that promotes defenses against insects that chew, like the Colorado potato beetle. Some of Alexander’s research shows that these defenses can lower the weight of beetles. He thinks that this is due to protease inhibitors, which disrupt the enzymes insects use to digest proteins. Similarly, salicylic acid plays a major signaling role in plant development and defenses against insects that pierce into the plant and suck out fluids, like aphids. While these natural products have the potential to serve as affordable and effective pesticides, their sublethal effects lag behind the efficacy of more lethal chemicals. To help close this gap, Alexander has been researching how potato defenses induced by elicitors can impact the behavior of the beetle and its ability to reproduce.

Alexander first came to an interest in agriculture through his passion for food. He was classically trained in French cuisine and worked as a chef for twelve years, where he experienced first-hand the amount of waste that happens in the food system. His travels in countries affected by food insecurity helped solidify a desire to return to school, and he attended Portland State for a degree in biology. Despite his day job defending crops from insect invaders, he maintains a significant interest in bugs, founding an entomology club at Oregon State. Alexander will be transitioning into the PhD degree in the fall and switching topics towards defending vineyards from vine mealybugs. He eventually hopes to pursue a career in academic research and education.

To hear more about Alexander’s story, including why he advocates for insects as a sustainable protein source, tune in this Sunday, May 28th, at 7PM on KBVR 88.7 FM.

“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 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 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.

We are pleased to introduce our upcoming guest, Christopher Cousins, a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, advised by Prof. Tiffany Garcia. Cousins is  researching torrent salamanders, a family of small amphibians endemic to the Pacific Northwest.

The habitat for torrent salamanders stretches from the far north of California up through the Washington coast and includes distinct populations in the Cascade Range and the Oregon Coast Range. Torrent salamanders inhabit cold streams at relatively high altitude — the kind where few or no fish live, leaving the amphibians near or at the top of the local food chain. Such streams can be ephemeral, disappearing at times throughout the year and leaving salamanders vulnerable to desiccation. This problem is only expected to worsen as climate change further upends these water systems. Torrent salamanders are currently candidates for classification under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the federal law which grants protections to threatened species. Logging presents another danger to salamander habitats, as reduced tree canopy cover can contribute to higher water temperatures. Under the ESA, officials could prohibit logging in buffer zones around small streams, granting salamander habitats the same protection as the larger streams where salmon live.

Chris’s work with salamanders takes many different forms. He has extensive experience in fieldwork, spending six months traveling throughout Oregon and Washington. He has used environmental DNA from water samples to detect torrent salamander populations in various streams. In another project, he collected DNA directly from approximately 150 salamanders. Chris performed both the lab work to process these samples and the bioinformatics analysis to assemble their DNA sequences. This summer, he plans to conduct a detailed survey of the streams of the streams in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. The overarching goal of his PhD is to document the genetic diversity among torrent salamanders and characterize their population structure across the region, which he hopes will help inform the ESA decision-making process.

Chris remembers catching frogs and salamanders as a child – proof of his fascination with amphibians at a young age. His father was in the Navy, so the family moved around repeatedly, but Chris grew up mostly in Japan. Upon moving back to the US, he felt drawn to Oregon and enrolled at Lane community college before transferring to Oregon State to earn his bachelor’s degree as a first-generation college graduate. He remained at OSU for his graduate work due to the community of scientific mentors he had built. To hear more about his journey, what it is like to explore the Mt. St. Helens eruption zone, and what motivates him to work with this threatened species, tune in to KBVR 88.7 FM this this Sunday, Feb 19^th, at 7pm.

This week on Inspiration Dissemination, we are looking forward to chatting with Andrew Carpenter, a postdoctoral fellow working in the lab of Professor Joe Baio in the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering.

Andrew’s research seeks a better understanding of a protein called dysferlin, which plays a critical role in repairing muscle cells.  Muscles undergo constant strain as they expand and contract, leading to tears in the sarcolemmas — thin membranes that surround muscle fibers. Dysferlin is responsible for recruiting vesicles to the site of these tears for a process called vesicle fusion to take place. Andrew likens this mechanism to using a denim patch to fix a hole in jeans, if the patch could become fully absorbed into the fabric in the way that vesicles eventually do into sarcolemmas. Dysferlin is clinically important because certain mutations (dysferlinopathies) to the gene encoding dysferlin lead to a disease called muscular dystrophy. The symptoms of dysferlinopathy typically include muscle weakness and damage to the musculoskeletal system, especially in the limbs.

The general importance of dysferlin to cell repair is well-established, but the molecular details of its mechanism of action are relatively unknown.  Andrew uses an advanced experimental method called sum-frequency spectroscopy to study the protein at high resolution. This procedure uses two lasers — one infrared and one visible green — and points them at the sample of interest. When the lasers hit the sample, a third beam of light is generated at the surface, carrying information about the vibrations of the molecules. Quantum mechanical calculations are used to examine the intensity of this light as a function of frequency. In Andrew’s research, a synthetic lipid monolayer serves as an in-vitro model of the sarcolemma, and he introduces the dysferlin protein either in its healthy form or with various mutations. Then he uses spectroscopy data to infer changes in protein orientation and binding. In the future, he intends to correlate his experiments with data from live cells.

Andrew first discovered his fascination with laser instrumentation as an undergraduate at Linfield University. After that, he obtained a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Oregon, where he used small oil droplets called nano-emulsions to study the oil-water interface. His background in physical chemistry and expertise in the sum-frequency spectroscopy method have enabled him to readily adapt to studying biological lipid interfaces. His research, including a recent publication, is currently supported by the National Science Foundation.

To hear more about Andrew’s research journey and the differences and similarities in being a postdoc and a graduate student, tune in after the Super Bowl this Sunday, February 12^th, at 7pm on 88.7 FM KBVR.