OSU Research Matters

The Boone Pickens School of Geology is focused on making a positive impact on Oklahoma, the nation, and the world through an integrated understanding of the earth – particularly in the fields of petroleum, energy and environmental geosciences. To help their mission, Oklahoma State recently introduced two new degree programs in geophysics and environmental geosciences. As a geology major, you have a total of four concentrations to choose from. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Camelia Knapp, the head of the school, to learn more about everything the major has to offer.

How do we value the things that we value? We produce information-processing models of the psychology that supports value computation in humans. We ask questions such as: What is a value, that the mind would have evolved to represent it? What design features does a mind need to be equipped with in order to value things, events, states of affairs, and social partners the human way? In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Daniel Sznycer to learn more about the value we put on our emotions.

In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Jimmie Weaver to learn more about how chemists can impact everyday society.

Black-tailed prairie dogs are native to the Great Plains, but Sylvatic plague (Yersinia pestis) is not. This disease was first introduced to North America in the early 1900s and only reached many regions of the Great Plains within the past 20–30 years. This disease can wipe out 95-99% of prairie dogs in a landscape. In some landscapes, these population "busts" can be followed by rapid growth, leading to population "booms" that intensify conflicts with livestock. This destabilized system has negative effects on both livestock and wildlife, and understanding either how to stabilize these dynamics, or at least mitigate their effects, is a major priority for managers. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Courtney Duchardt, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University, who is studying these population cycles to evaluate their effects on associated wildlife, and explore management strategies to address these issues.

All around us are sounds that we cannot hear that are capable of traveling over extreme distances, even around the Earth. Just like regular sounds, these sounds carry information about what made them. This is how you could be blindfolded and still know where someone is in the room if they are talking. Oklahoma State University professor Dr. Brian Elbing and his team has been listening to these sounds for six years with some of the detections being from explosions, earthquakes, fireballs, and tornadoes. Tornadoes have been the primary focus, with the goal being to determine what exactly produces the sound and whether it can be used to improve warnings. More recently, they have begun listening for earthquakes from high altitude balloons as part of a collaboration with NASA JPL and Sandia Labs. This work uses Earth has a model for Venus to see it could be used to study the structure of Venus, which is too hot to have any sensors on the surface. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Elbing to learn more about how we can use infrasound to improve tornado warnings.

Have you ever forgotten a new acquaintance’s face? We all have, and usually with minor consequences, if any. This error becomes problematic in the legal system, though. Eyewitnesses to crimes sometimes make memory mistakes that lead to innocent people being accused and imprisoned of crimes they did not commit. People also sometimes fail to notice missing or wanted people in their midst. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Kara Moore, an assistant professor in Oklahoma State University's Psychology Department. The conversation explains how memory is crucial to missing and wanted persons cases, and how we can avoid errors — or account for them — in the legal system.

Find more of Dr. Moore's research here: https://calmlab.mystrikingly.com/

Whether we like it or not, things in life are going to change. Oklahoma State professor Nikos Dimotakis has even made a career out of studying change and how we adapt. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dimotakis, who focuses on how individuals perceive and react to their environment — specifically in the workplace.

Much of the research on our genome focuses on the genes that make proteins, but those only constitute about one percent of our DNA. What about the other 99% that is considered noncoding — which was once called junk DNA? It might not be junk. As much as 80% of the genome has some biochemical function, but we remain puzzled by its role. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Darren Hagen, who, along with his students, is studying a diverse array of species to identify genome features and decipher the role of the unknown 99%.

Many American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities experience high rates of health inequities including tobacco-related health conditions, alcohol and substance use disorders, suicide deaths, and more recently, negative impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic. These health inequities have catastrophic mental health and public health impacts; yet, these research areas remain largely understudied among AI/AN populations. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Ashley Cole to learn more about existing prevention and intervention efforts to improve the health of AI/AN communities.

The pirate held a central place among rogues who scandalized through the pages of crime literature in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Pirates supplied ample material for tales of wild adventures in exotic locations. Beyond their luridly engaging exploits, the pirate figure appealed to writers and readers for intellectual reasons. The Americas, including the Caribbean, opened imaginative space for moral and political philosophers to reimagine the fundamentals of human nature, the origins of civil society, and the best models for governance. Literary pirates proved to be exceptionally suitable to consideration of these issues. By “turning to account,” or going rogue, literary pirates presented a kind of living experiment; their practice of exiting mainstream civil society and recreating alternative ones on their own terms allowed those who wrote about them to explore the fundamentals of human nature and the possibilities and limitations of civil organization at a time when these were pressing issues in Britain’s literary and philosophical circles. In this episode, Meghan Robinson speaks with Dr. Richard Frohock to learn more about the impact pirates had on 18th Century literature.