Category Archives: Public Policy

AI that benefits humans and humanity

When you think about artificial intelligence or robots in the everyday household, your first thought might be that it sounds like science fiction – like something out of the 1999 cult classic film “Smart House”. But it’s likely you have some of this technology in your home already – if you own a Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Roomba, smart watch, or even just a smartphone, you’re already plugged into this network of AI in the home. The use of this technology can pose great benefits to its users, spanning from simply asking Google to set an alarm to wake you up the next day, to wearable smart devices that can collect health data such as heart rate. AI is also currently being used to improve assistive technology, or technology that is used to improve the lives of disabled or elderly individuals. However, the rapid explosion in development and popularity of this tech also brings risks to consumers: there isn’t great legislation yet about the privacy of, say, healthcare data collected by such devices. Further, as we discussed with another guest a few weeks ago, there is the issue of coding ethics into AI – how can we as humans program robots in such a way that they learn to operate in an ethical manner? Who defines what that is? And on the human side – how do we ensure that human users of such technology can actually trust them, especially if they will be used in a way that could benefit the user’s health and wellness?

Anna Nickelson, a fourth-year PhD student in Kagan Tumer’s lab in the Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, joins us this week to discuss her research, which touches on several of these aspects regarding the use of technology as part of healthcare. Also a former Brookings Institute intern, Anna incorporates not just coding of robots but far-reaching policy and legislation goals into her work. Her research is driven by a very high level goal: how do we create AI that benefits humans and humanity?

Anna Nickelson, fourth year PhD student in the Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute.

AI for social good

When we think about how to create technology that is beneficial, Anna says that there are four major considerations in play. First is the creation of the technology itself – the hardware, the software; how technology is coded, how it’s built. The second is technologists and the technology industry – how do we think about and create technologies beyond the capitalist mindset of what will make the most money? Third is considering the general public’s role: what is the best way to educate people about things like privacy, the limitations and benefits of AI, and how to protect themselves from harm? Finally, she says we must also consider policy and legislation surrounding beneficial tech at all levels, from local ordinances to international guidelines. 

Anna’s current research with Dr. Tumer is funded by the NSF AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups (AI-CARING), an institute through the National Science Foundation that focuses on “personalized, longitudinal, collaborative AI, enabling the development of AI systems that learn personalized models of user behavior…and integrate that knowledge to support people and AIs working together”, as per their website. The institute is a collaboration between five universities, including Oregon State University and OHSU. What this looks like for Anna is lots of code writing and simulations studying how AI systems make trade-offs between different objectives.For this she looks at machine learning for decision making, and how multiple robots or AIs can work together towards a specific task without necessarily having to communicate with each other directly. For this she looks at machine learning for decision making in robots, and how multiple robots or AIs can work together towards a specific task without necessarily having to communicate with each other directly. Each robot or AI may have different considerations that factor into how they accomplish their objective, so part of her goal is to develop a framework for the different individuals to make decisions as part of a group.

With an undergraduate degree in math, a background in project management in the tech industry, engineering and coding skills, and experience working with a think tank in DC on tech-related policy, Anna is uniquely situated to address the major questions about development technology for social good in a way that mitigates risk. She came to graduate school at Oregon State with this interdisciplinary goal in mind. Her personal life goal is to get experience in each sector so she can bring in a wide range of perspectives and ideas. “There are quite a few people working on tech policy right now, but very few people have the breadth of perspective on it from the low level to the high level,” she says. 

If you are interested in hearing more about Anna’s life goals and the intersection of artificial intelligence, healthcare, and policy, join us live at 7 PM on Sunday, May 7th on https://kbvrfm.orangemedianetwork.com/, or after the show wherever you find your podcasts. 

Water Woes of the West

Water resources in the western United States are at a turning point. Droughts are becoming more common and as temperatures rise due to climate change more water will be needed to sustain the current landscape. The ongoing issues in the Klamath River Basin, a watershed crossing southern Oregon and northern California, are a case-study of how the West will handle future water scarcity. Aside from the limited supply of water, deciding how to manage this dwindling resource is no easy feat.  Too much water has been promised to too many stakeholder groups, resulting in interpersonal conflict, distrust, and litigation. Our guest this week is Hannah Whitley, a PhD Candidate of Rural Sociology at Pennsylvania State University and a Visiting Scholar in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University. Hannah grew up on a beef ranch in a small southwestern Oregon town, so she knows some of these issues all too well. Hannah is investigating how governance organizations work together to allocate water in the Upper Klamath Basin and how to tell the story of what water means to different stakeholder groups. By observing countless hours of public meetings, having one-on-one conversations with community members, and incorporating a novel research method called photovoice, she hopes to understand what can make water governance processes successful because the current situation is untenable for everyone involved.

Klamath Project Canal B looking southeast toward Merrill and Malin, Oregon. The Canal, which is typically full, moves water from Upper Klamath Lake to farms and ranchers who are part of the Klamath Project. The canal has been dry since October 2020. Taken September 2021.

How we got here

Prior to the 1800s-era Manifest Destiny movement, the area known today as the Upper Klamath Basin was solely inhabited by the Klamath Tribes (including the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin-Paiute people). At the time, Upper Klamath Lake was at least four times its original size, and c’waam (Lost River suckers) and koptu (shortnose suckers) thrived in abundance. The 1864 Klamath Treaty, ratified in 1870, officially recognized the Klamath Tribes as sovereigns in the eyes of the federal government. Treaties are especially powerful arrangements with the federal government, akin to international agreements between nations. These agreements are generally considered to be permanent laws, or at least that’s what the tribes were told.

As part of the conditions of the Klamath Tribes Treaty, tribes retained hunting, fishing, and water rights on 1.5 million acres of land, but ceded control of 22 million acres to the federal government. Those expropriated lands were given to westward settlers who took advantage of 1862 Homestead Act.  The 1906 Reclamation Project drained much of Upper Klamath Lake, leaving behind soils that are nutrient dense and thus highly valuable. An additional homesteading program associated with the 1902 Reclamation Act prioritized the allocation of reclaimed federal land to veterans following World War I (there is ongoing litigation on whether these settlers have water rights as well, or just land rights). These land deeds have been passed onto families over time, though many mid-twentieth-century homesteaders opted to sell their land during the 1980 Farm Crisis.

The Klamath Tribes’ unceded lands were not contested during the intervening years. In the mid-1950s, however, the U.S. government used the 1954 Termination Act to nullify the Klamath Tribes’ 1864 Treaty. Although the Klamath tribes were “one of the strongest and wealthiest tribal nations in the US,” one result was the loss of the tribes’ remaining land and management rights. In 1986, their status as a federally-recognized tribe was restored, however, no land was returned. Soon after the Klamath Tribes were federally recognized (again), two species of fish that only spawn in the Upper Klamath Lake area were listed as endangered species. This provided both the c’waam and koptu fish species new legal protections, though they have always had significant cultural significance for the Klamath Tribes.

Sump 1B at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge is a 3,500-acre wetland and an important nesting, brood rearing, and molting area for a large number of waterfowl. Sump 1B has been dry since October 2020.

Where are we now

The Klamath River Basin is said to be one of the most complicated areas in the world due to the watershed’s transboundary location and the more than 60 different parties who have some interest in the Basin’s water allocation, including federal agencies, the states of California and Oregon, counties, irrigation districts, small farmers, large farmers, ranchers, and tribal communities. The Klamath Tribes play an active role in the management of water Basin-wide, although final governance decisions are made by state and federal agencies including the Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, and state departments of environmental quality.

Currently, the Upper Klamath Basin is occupied by multi-generation farmers and ranchers on lands that are exceedingly favorable for agricultural production. Some families have accumulated significant portions of land since the 1900s while others are still small-acreage farmers. As a result of farm consolidations that resulted from economic distress during the twentieth-century, many families  had overwhelming success in purchasing adjacent and nearby land parcels as they were sold over the last hundred years. The result is that these few well-resourced families have disproportionate control of the area’s agricultural and natural resources compared to smaller-scale farms. 

There are a variety of crops under production such as potatoes for Frito-Lay, Kettle Foods and In-N-Out Burger, as well as peppermint for European teas, and alfalfa used to feed cattle in China and the Willamette Valley. Regardless of the crop, as temperatures have risen and drought conditions worsen, Basin farmers and ranchers need more water each and every season. And it’s typically the more established farms who have a bigger say in how Upper Basin water (or lack thereof) and drought support programs are managed, regularly leaving smaller farms frustrated with decision-making processes. In addition to the seasonal droughts keeping lake levels low, stagnant water, summer sunshine, and nutrient runoff contribute to algae proliferation in the Upper Basin that decreases the survival rate of the endangered fish. Unfortunately, there is simply not enough water to continue with the status quo.

Near Tulelake, California. September 2021.

How are we moving forward

How do you balance all* of these competing interests through a collaborative governance model? (*We haven’t even mentioned the dams, or the downstream Yurok and Karuk tribes relying on water for salmon populations, the Ammon Bundy connection, or the State of Jefferson connection, read the multi-part series in The Herald for a deeper dive.) There needs to be a process where everyone is able to contribute and understand how these decisions will be made so they will be accepted in the future. Unfortunately, little research has been done in this area even though the need for new climate adaptation policies are increasingly in demand.

This is ongoing work that Hannah Whitley is conducting for her dissertation; how are stakeholders engaged in water governance? What are the different effects of these processes on factors like interpersonal trust, perceptions of power, and participation in state-led programs? The theory of the case is that if everyone’s voice is heard, and their concerns are addressed as best they can given limited resources, the final agreement may not completely satisfy all parties, but it’s an arrangement that is workable across all stakeholders. 

Hannah has been conducting field work since September that includes observing public meetings, interviewing stakeholders, and diving into archives. Hannah attended an in-person farm tour in September. During lunch, one Upper Basin stakeholder inquired about the feasibility of conducting a photovoice project similar to what Hannah did for her Masters thesis work with a group of women farmers and gardeners in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The photovoice project allows individuals to tell their own stories through provided cameras with further input through collaborative focus groups. We will talk about this and so much more. Be sure to listen live on Sunday January 23rd at 7PM on 88.7FM or download the podcast if you missed it! Follow along with Hannah’s fieldwork on Instagram at @myrsocdissertation or visit her website.

This post was written by Adrian Gallo and edited by Hannah Whitely

Hannah Whitley completed her undergraduate degrees at Oregon State in 2017. Now a PhD Candidate at Penn State, Hannah will be a Visiting Scholar in the OSU School of Public Policy while she completes her dissertation fieldwork.

Finding a place in policy: where do the scientists fit in?

Somewhere, in a local government meeting, an idea is proposed, a policy brief is written, some voting occurs, paperwork is pushed around, money is allocated, and a new highway is built.

In the same region, some bighorn sheep are off trekking in search of their favorite grasses to eat. They come upon a road they can’t cross that wasn’t there before. The sheep stay put and eat the same old grass they were already eating.

Bighorn sheep iImage from Defenders of Wildlife.

When policymakers decided to build this road, it’s unclear whether they considered the consequences of this type of habitat fragmentation on the tiny ecosystems of bacteria that live inside of each bighorn sheep. More importantly, whether they knew their decision might lead to unforeseen consequences for bighorn population health.

We take for granted how intertwined policy and science really are.

Claire Couch is a 5th year PhD candidate in the department of Integrative Biology, studying wildlife disease ecology, but she’s also the president of a new Science & Policy Club at Oregon State University.

Advised by Anna Jolles in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Claire studies the bacteria that live in the guts of large animals like African buffalo, rocky mountain elk, and bighorn sheep. She’s interested in how the gut microbiome can contribute to disease resistance, but separate from her PhD research, she’s interested in how policy can be informed by science, and how science can be impacted by policy.

Claire says she’s always been interested in ecosystem health and fascinated by ecosystem dynamics between big scale (a region the sheep lives in) and small scale (the bacteria living in the gut) ecosystems. Through her research, she’s been exposed to diverse conservation issues for different wildlife species. For example, management and policy shapes where wildlife can reside, and where they are determines the factors that shape the gut microbiome. It became apparent to Claire that most scientists are not typically trained to understand and partake in policy, including herself, even though is it’s critical to all of our research pursuits.

(Left to right) Jane Lubchenco, Karen McLeod and Steve Lundeberg at OSU science policy panel discussion.

Claire started looking for ways to learn more and to become more engaged in science policy, but wasn’t finding exactly what she was looking for. OSU has some science-policy courses and clubs, but they are typically very specific to one type of science. So although she didn’t feel qualified to take the lead on this, she created what she was looking for: a science policy space that is more inclusive and general, with an emphasis on career development and general policy literacy.

In the first year since this group started, they’ve already packed in several activities including:  meetings with OSU faculty who are closely tied to policy, a seminar about how to communicate about controversial topics, a panel talk about how scientists can communicate with the press, a talk from a government agency research organization scientist, and a meeting with House Rep. Peter DeFazio. Finally, the group has an open-source data panel coming up.

House Rep Peter Defazio speaking with OSU Science Policy club. Image from gazettetimes

Claire wants to help scientists make their work relevant, but she hasn’t been doing it all alone. There are currently a few other club officers, and as Claire writes her dissertation, she’s looking to pass on club leadership. In the future, she hopes to see the club become more engaged with the non-OSU community members around us, host bigger events in collaboration with other groups on campus, and start up a mentoring program in which club members would be mentored by policy professionals.

To hear more about this policy club and Claire’s research and future plans, tune in to KBVR 88.7 FM or stream online March 1, 2020 at 7 P.M.

The Evolving Views of Plastic Pollution

Oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface and some studies suggest we still have over 91% of marine species that await discovery. Even as far back as 2010 some NASA scientists admit we knew more about the surface of Mars than we did about the bottom of our own oceans! Despite the fact we may not know everything about our oceans just yet, one thing is certain: plastics are becoming part of ecosystems that have never experienced it and we’re beginning to understand its massive impact. One estimate suggests that even if you had 100 ships towing for 10 hours a day, with 200 meters of netting and perfectly capturing every large and tiny piece of plastic, we could only clean up 2% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch every year. It would take 50 years to clean everything up, assuming we magically stopped using plastics on Earth. As one Nature research article suggests, the problems lies mostly with local municipalities; but that means with targeted local action, individuals can make a real difference and limit how much plastic makes it to our oceans. So you may be thinking “let’s tell all our friends these plastic facts and then everyone will stop using plastic, right?”. Not so fast, unfortunately a host of studies show just informing people about the scope of the problem doesn’t always make them change their behavior to ameliorate the problem in question.

Katy getting a seal kiss from Boots the harbor seal at the Oregon Coast Aquarium

Our guest this evening is Katy Nalven, a 2nd year Masters student in the Marine Resources Management program, who is using a community based social marketing approach to ask people not only IF they know about the problem of plastics in oceans, but she also seeks to understand how people think about this problem and what could be individual hurdles to decreasing plastic usage. Using a survey based approach administered at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Katy plans to examine a few specific communities of interest to identify how the views around plastic usage from Aquarium visitors and local community members may differ and hopefully where they overlap.

This community based social marketing approach has many steps, but it’s proven more effective in changing behaviors for beneficial outcomes rather than just mass media information campaigns by themselves. By identifying a target goal for a community of interest you can tailor educational material that will have the greatest chance of success. For example, if your goal is to decrease plastic usage for coastal communities in Oregon, you may find that a common behavior in the community you can target to have the greatest impact such as bringing your own mug to coffee shops for a discount, or automatically saying “no straw please” whenever going out to eat. Katy is beginning to pin down how these Oregon coast communities view plastic usage with the hope that a future student can begin implementing her recommended marketing strategies to change behaviors for a more positive ocean health outlook.

Hugs from Cleo, the Giant Pacific Octopus, at the Oregon Coast Aquarium

Katy grew up in the landlocked state of Arizona constantly curious about animals, but on a childhood visit to SeaWorld San Diego she became exposed to the wonders of the ocean and was wonderstruck by a close call with a walrus. Near the end of a Biology degree in her undergraduate years, simultaneously competing as an NAIA Soccer player for Lyons College, Katy was looking for career options and with a glimpse of her stuffed walrus she got at the San Diego Zoo, she decided to look at Alaska for jobs. After a few summers being a whale watching guide in Juneau, an animal handling internship in Florida, and then another internship in Hawaii Katy decided she wanted to formally revisit her science roots but with a public policy perspective. Oregon State University’s Marine Resource Management Program was the perfect fit. In fact, once she was able to connect with her advisor, Dr. Kerry Carlin-Morgan who is also the Education Director for the Oregon Coast Aquarium, Katy knew this was the perfect step for her career.

Meeting Jack Johnson at the 6th International Marine Debris Conference. He and his wife are the founders of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation whose mission is to “provide students with experiences that will enhance their appreciation for and understanding of their environment so they will be lifelong stewards of the earth.”

 

 

Be sure to tune in to Katy’s interview Sunday August 19th at 7PM on 88.7FM, or listen live, to learn more about her findings about how we view plastic pollution, and how we can potentially make local changes to help the global ecosystem.

Earth, Water, and Fire (& Politics too)

What does it mean to be at the intersection of science, policy, philosophy, and cultural norms? This week our guest Brian Trick, a Masters student in the College of Forestry, will discuss some tremendous hurdles we Oregonians have with how we perceive and need healthy forests for the most important resource of all.

Sometimes you get sent out on a fire, spend two days on it, and then it rains on you. Trying to stay warming until it's time to leave. This my best Wilson brother, "behind enemy lines" look.

Sometimes you get sent out on a fire, spend two days on it, and then it rains on you. Trying to stay warm until it’s time to leave. This is my best Wilson brother, “behind enemy lines” look.

We need water to live; considering Oregon receives about 80% of its freshwater from forests it only makes sense to protect areas that carry water from mountaintops to our taps. There are federally mandated safety boundaries (riparian buffers) that surround rivers and streams in forests applied on public and private lands alike. These buffers restrict activity to help minimize erosion losses, temperature spikes in water, as well as sediment and chemical inputs to keep ecosystems functioning. Most of the water purification process happens (literally) upstream. Research projects suggest larger riparian areas will keep ecosystems functioning at a higher level; perfect you might think, lets make the riparian buffers extra wide right?

Not so fast, what happens if you own a small parcel of forest and there are so many streams the riparian buffers prevent you from doing anything on your own property? How much of a buffer zone around a stream is needed for a healthy ecosystem, while simultaneously allowing small land-owners to manage forests? Can we arrive at a ‘one size fits most‘ for protected riparian areas? This is policy at its best, if it works!

This is a complicated intersection of forest management and domestic policy and Brian Trick will help discuss some current events and what this could mean for a judicial precedent. In the event we help Brian save the riparian-buffer world, we’ll also delve into his upcoming job as a Forest Service smokejumper, but don’t worry this isn’t the first time he’s jumped out of aircrafts!

Tune in on Sunday, March 27th at 7PM PST on 88.7 FM in Corvallis or stream us online at http://kbvr.com/listen to hear exactly why Brian is (literally) a Hotshot!

Brian working for the USDA Forest Service in a rappel operation located in Salmon, ID.

Brian working for the USDA Forest Service in a rappel operation in Salmon, ID.

A Bridge over Troubled Water: Connecting Policy Makers and the Public

As a graduate student in public policy, Misty Freeman has a passion for bridging the communication gap between decision makers at the state and local level and the people who are affected by their policies. Working underneath Dr. Denise Lach, Misty’s dissertation work has focused specifically on the issue of water usage. As the climate continues to change and droughts on the West Coast worsen, Misty’s work becomes ever more important. By comparing the needs and resource availability of water among different rural areas in Oregon, Misty hopes to contribute to initiatives across the United States bringing critical thinking about rural needs to resource management policies at the state level.

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To lean more about Misty’s research and her personal journey, tune in tonight to 88.7FM KBVR Corvallis at 7PM PST, or stream the show live online at http://kbvr.com/listen!