Oregon State Science Pub

Every time you rely on your phone to translate a foreign language, you ask your smart speaker to do something or your car skids on black ice, you've taken advantage of artificial intelligence. While Hollywood may pose a fearful future in which humans battle wily robots, the reality is that this technology faces significant limitations. Initiatives to create self-driving cars and swarms of flying drones occasionally capture headlines, but daunting hurdles remain.

Distinguished Professor William J. Ripple discusses how his conservation research and concern about the global environment and climate change led to him publish the Scientists' Warning to Humanity paper, which has been signed and endorsed by more than 20,000 scientists from 184 countries. He shares his journey from ecological research to science advocacy, providing suggestions for how the planet might avert an impending environmental crisis.

Whether it's genetically modified crops that grow without any interference from pests, or mobile apps that a landowner can use to calculate the amount of grass available in their field, technology allows farmers to save time and money.

Whether scrambled, fried or baked in a cake, eggs are a mainstay in homes and restaurants, but in recent years, the industry has seen major changes in production practices. James Hermes, Associate Professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences, discusses the history of the chicken industry in Oregon and the impacts of the shift to "free range" and other methods of producing eggs.

Sean Fleming, book author and courtesy professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, discusses how rivers interact with the land in the Northwest and around the world.

Larry Landis, director of the Special Collections and Archives Research Center at Oregon State, discusses the origins of OSU research and its connections to contemporary issues.

Unlike their close relatives, which include puffins and murres, the marbled murrelet is a bird of two worlds. It gets its food from the ocean but raises its young up to 50 miles inland in mature forests. Jim Rivers, assistant professor in the College of Forestry, discusses an ongoing Oregon State University research project to learn more about the behavior of this endangered species.

Hops chemistry expert Tom Shellhammer shares a glimpse into the future of craft beers as new varieties of hops and barley work their way into brewers' recipes.

Recorded 2-12-18

Heather Knight, a researcher in OSU's College of Engineering studies how humans and robots interact and explores what the future holds as these interactions become more frequent.

Author Steve Carpenter explores the fungi found around the Coast Range's tallest peak.