Giving the Cold Soul of a Machine a Burning Desire to Teach Your Children Well:

Tonight at 7 pm Pacific time on 88.7 KBVR Corvallis, Beatrice Moissinac comes into the studio at Inspiration Dissemination to talk about Artificial Intelligence and fire safety training. If you’re curious how those two subjects are related, tune in live or stream the episode here!

Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT, http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/center-for-brains-minds-and-machines-0909

A PhD student in Oregon State’s Computer Science program, Beatrice works underneath Prasad Tadepalli and collaborates with Enterprise Risk Services to design computer programs which guide students through a virtual fire safety training experience.

What kind of virtual training? As it turns out, Oregon State has an entire virtual campus dedicated to it in the online game Second Life (a virtual world that may or may not use more energy than some South American countries). Using one of the dorms in the second life version of OSU, Beatrice designs a training program that responds to individual students’ needs. Students are then immersed in a fully interactive virtual world where they learn what to do in the event that their dorm were to catch fire.

a-major-fire-involving-an-abandoned-convent-in-massueville-quebec-canada

http://www.zdnet.com/article/indoor-navigation-tracks-firefighters-in-blazing-buildings/

By analyzing what knowledge has not been learned, and by determining the best way to challenge the student, the artificial intelligence program is intended to provide a perfectly matched learning environment. This is crucial for training in something like fire safety, or other natural disasters, since training scenarios in real life could not be safely (or economically) constructed.

Beatrice is also the co-program manager for ChickTech Corvallis, a local chapter of the national non-profit group that organizes science and technology outreach and communications projects for high school girls. As a woman in computer science, a program that (at OSU) is still less than 10% female, Beatrice understands that the gender gap in science and technology studies is still very real in the United States. With here interests in both teaching and computer science combined, Beatrice continues to work for the academic benefit of the next generation. If she isn’t teaching a computer to teach people, then she’s teaching them herself!

We’ll be back after this short break!

Inspiration Dissemination will be off the air for the next two weekends, as Zhian and I will be out of town for various reasons and unable to host. But have no fear! June 7th we return, and will be interviewing Beatrice Moissinac who studies Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). She describes her work as, “a branch of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning that looks at how a computer can learn to become an expert at a task, and then teach this task to a human using lessons and exercises designed by the computer itself.” Beatrice is working at Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) at OSU, “to develop Virtual Learning Environments”.

She says her first application is Fire Safety: How do you teach someone how to get out of a building on fire?

She’s probably right to be worried (the rope ladder I keep under my bed is a little dated), and we can’t wait to find out what her research in artificial intelligence has to say about fire safety!

Whosits & Whatsits Galore: What do larval fish eat, and who eats them?

Tonight on Inspiration Dissemination, Miram Gleiber (a 1st year PhD student in Integrative Biology) discusses her passion for ‘le poisson’. Working underneath Su Sponaugle and Bob Cowan, Miram first got into the piscine when she was a little girl, investigating tide pools in Victoria, British Columbia. “When you take a scoop of water from the ocean you don’t realize what’s in it,” Miram muses, “… it’s a whole other world.”

Above: Larval Fish captured in the Straits of Florida (Photos by: Cedric Guigand) on the left, and on the right, Copepods captured in the western Antarctic Peninsula: Clockwise from top left are Calanus propinquus, Paraeuchaeta antarctica, Metridia gerlachei, Calanoides acutus (Photos by: Miram Gleiber)

Because Larval fish grow up to be reef fish, which are good for biodiversity and tourism, obtaining accurate numbers of wild stock that survive the larval stage and understanding what conditions promote survival is valuable knowledge. The fish first hatch and “hang out” for thirty days in the open ocean before coming back to the reef, during which time they subsist largely on patches of zooplankton and phytoplankton that float around in the open ocean. Miram’s current research at OSU aims to understand how these patches of tiny biodiversity contribute to the growth and survival of the small fishes that eventually make their way into the view of our camera lenses and photo albums, and sometimes to our plates, as well.

To learn more about Miram and her adventures on the open sea, join us at 7pm Pacific on 88.7 FM KBVR Corvallis, or stream the talk live here!

ARSV Laurence M. Gould, a 230-foot Antarctic research vessel.

From Systems Bio and Symbiosis to Nepovirus and Nematodes

There are perhaps a many as one million species of nematodes. Some parasitic varieties can grow to a meter in length, but most are microscopic in size. They inhabit almost every environment imaginable, from salt water to soil, and even human bodies. But it isn’t the symbiosis between a parasitic nematode like hookworm and a human that Danielle Tom is interested in, her research in the Department of Integrative Biology at OSU concerns a particular nematode called Xiphinema americanum.

Despite the fact that nematodes cover most of the planet’s surface and there are probably billions of them thriving on the earth at any given moment, surprisingly little is still known about the worms. Xiphinema americanum, for instance, carries a bacteria specially designed to live inside it called Xiphinematobacter. Studying the evolutionary genomics of these species can help elucidate the phylogenetic, or evolutionary, history of both. This work is important to the United States Department of Agriculture, because Xiphinema americanum is a potential carrier for nepovirus, which can infect important crops like grapes, raspberries, and tobacco via these plants’ root systems, which the worm also exists in a symbiotic relationship with. This sort of an analysis, of an animal and its relationship to its environment at multiple levels of scale and with regard to multiple other species, is called systems biology.

Danielle works under Dee Denver, associate professor and director of the the Molecular Cellular Biology program (MCB), and she will be joining us on the show tonight at 7pm pacific time.

To learn more about this exciting research and her personal journey into genomics and biology, tune into 88.7 FM to listen, or stream the show live here!

Genomics on the Farm: Breeding A More Resistant Rice

Photo courtesy the Jaiswal Lab

Tonight Noor Al-Bader of OSU’s Molecular and Cell Biology department joins us on the show to discuss her doctoral research concerning genomics and plant breeding. Working in Dr. Pankaj Jaiswal’s lab, Noor deals with large data sets of genetic information concerning varieties of Rice and Chia. The goal of her study is to determine which genes relate to the expression of traits implicated in stress resistance and nutritional content. Often the varieties of these crops grown for their value to farmers are susceptible to environmental stressors such as high salinity in water, drought, and high temperatures. These environmental concerns unfortunately promise to be increasing concerns in many areas such crops are grown due to the increasing impact of climate change. Wild types are often hardier, and genetic studies of both types hold promise for producing a “happy medium” capable of producing high yield, nutritious rice and chia that is also highly prosperous under less than desirable environmental circumstances. These new varieties are not produced via genetic modification in the lab, but bred on the farm, crossing strains generation after generation and recording the results with painstaking attention to detail- the old fashioned way. The contrast between the hands on work of horticulture and the hard science of genetics in the lab may seem a surprising pair, but in this case the genetics research is utilized to facilitate traditional methods of horticulture by simply speeding along a process that could normally take lifetimes. Just like in her research, Noor strives to have the best of both worlds.

Continue reading →

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!

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.

Continue reading →

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