in this podcast, planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 katie perkins sits down with asheley landrum, ph.d., a media psychologist and associate professor of science communication in the college of media & communication at texas tech university, to find out the answers to these questions and more. listen in for a short deep dive into the research surrounding science communication and why we, as communicators, should be paying attention to it.

full transcript below:

asheley landrum (00:00:04) i study sort of how science is communicated through the whole system of science, scientist to scientist, scientist to public science through intermediaries like journalists, museums, and other types like that.  

katie perkins (00:00:19) my name is katie perkins, planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 from texas tech university, and today we’re gonna dive into the science behind scientific communication. joining me is dr. ashley landrum, a media psychologist and associate professor of science communication in the college of media and communication at texas tech university. her research investigates how values and worldviews influence people’s selection and processing of science media. so i have with me dr. ashley landrum, thank you so much for joining me today! i went through a lot of your research and i found a lot of it so interesting. and one of them i wanted to talk about was, you have an article that talks about conspiracy mentality and the denial of science. so can you tell me a little bit more about why the public tends to disagree with the science that they read in the media?  

asheley landrum (00:01:10) it is not that every issue of science is rejected by the public, or any one issue of science is rejected by the whole public. different groups of people are more receptive to messages of science about different topics depending on their own worldviews, their values, and their belief systems. so for example, we might see or hear about when we’re growing up that there are people who reject the idea of human-caused global climate change because it conflicts with their deeply held political beliefs or with the beliefs of groups that they are affiliated with or things that are important or core to their identity. conspiracy mentality is the other sort of element of that. when people are more prone to distrusting authorities or institutions, maybe they have full reason to distrust based on some things that happen in their background or things that they’ve read about.  but when you’re more open to, in some senses, distrusting authorities and institutions, it makes it a lot easier to believe that they would engage in certain types of conspiracies. so that government agencies would hush or hide or cover things up. whereas people who are less likely to have that sort of worldview or are more trusting of authorities and institutions, they’re less likely to sort of buy into some of the conspiracy theories that exist. so there are sort of several different worldviews and beliefs that can contribute to rejecting any one specific point of science. but the public as a whole generally accepts most of what science tells us. we just tend to focus on the ones that aren’t.  

katie perkins (00:02:53) do you think that journalists can play a role in changing those people that tend to reject science? or do you think that those beliefs are so deeply held that it’s gonna be very difficult for us to talk to them in a way that will hopefully change their mind?

asheley landrum (00:03:06) so in my view, it’s, it’s hard to say that journalists could make it better, but they could at least not make it worse. and so, i think that regardless of your profession, right, everybody in this world has beliefs. they have a worldview. they have, you know, a system of values that influence the way that they see the world. if journalists are using their platform in a way to try to stick it to certain populations, that could only make the problem worse. so we had a study that i collaborated with dan kahan and kathleen hall jamieson, and it was out of the annenberg public policy center at the university of pennsylvania. we showed that journalists could end up sort of creating a politically polarized environment over the issue of the zika virus simply by framing that study as an issue connected to one that is politically charged.  so we had sort of three different message groups that people were randomly assigned into. they could have just read a public health message about zika. we had a second message that had that public health message, but then connected the issue to climate change that said something like, if you’re concerned about zika, you should also be concerned about climate change because… and then we had a third condition that said, if you’re concerned about zika, you should be concerned about immigration because we have people immigrating to areas of the us from areas where it is habitable for these mosquitoes. and you know, the virus is, is bloodborne, sexually transmitted, and mosquito-transmitted. so we showed that in the public health condition, regardless of your political beliefs, you generally were concerned about zika. you believed the science that was presented. but in the condition where we presented it and tied it to climate change, we found that people who were more politically conservative were more likely to say, well, maybe i’m not that concerned about zika. and you know, we hear that a lot. “oh, you know, political conservatives reject science.” well, we also made liberals reject science because then in the third condition where we had attached it to immigration, then we had people who are more on the progressive or liberal side of the political spectrum saying, “oh, well maybe zika’s not that big of a deal and i don’t believe that it causes microcephaly.” so we could, you know, basically by tying it to an issue that’s already politically charged. we ended up polarizing that issue when it wasn’t one that was polarized before. and we refer to that as polluting the science communication environment. but when i’ve talked to journalists, i think many of the journalists that i’ve talked to think of themselves as storytellers or you know, artists or their sharing perspectives. and when i brought this up at a panel at a conference where we were talking to some science journalists and i said, to what extent are you paying attention to science com research or having it inform, you know, the way you communicate science so you can communicate more strategically right?  what we ended up finding or what those journalists told us was, well, it’s not our job to do that. and i was like, “oh, okay.” i had used that example that i just shared with you as the example when they were asking me like, “wait, i don’t understand what you’re talking about. what do you mean pay attention to science com research?” and i was like, “oh, we did this thing.” you know, one of the potential implications coming from this recognizing it’s one study, right, is that science communicators could inadvertently pollute the science communication environment by attaching something that’s not embedded with political meaning to something that is. 

katie perkins (00:06:36) i think that is just a really great example of why we need to, you know, look into the research that you’re doing and understand the science behind scientific communication, like you said earlier, because we play a big role in how the public perceives it and we can really be super divisive as journalists in scientific communication. 

asheley landrum (00:06:54) well one of the other things that we’ve talked about before is the way science journalists are trained compared to other types of journalists, and i can’t remember the exact numbers, but one of the researchers in science com was sort of counting and published the number of actual people who are hired as science journalists and how much it’s decreased over the past decade or even longer. instead, the people who are covering science are the ones who are covering politics or the ones that are covering other issues. and so they’re looking at science through that political lens already that can make – that can kind of complicate the issue, right? because they’re already kind of coming at it from this political perspective. and so the norms of communicating science as a journalist may need to be different than the norms of communicating politics or the norms of communicating, you know, economics or other types of issues. and when colleagues of mine and i do presentations on, you know, tips for communicating science and more frequently we do these with scientists, but these are also true for actual professional communicators. one of our first things is to really know what your goal is. and that seems silly because people know what their goal is, but do they? you know, it’s like, scientists might say, “well my goal right, is to communicate my science”. it’s like, okay, well if your goal is to communicate your science so that members of the public understand it, then you need to strategically design that message in order to do that. your goal might actually be to get people to think like you do – and that is a goal, but that’s a different one, from getting the public to understand it.  

katie perkins (00:08:36) i wanna talk a little bit more about your flat earth research. so you have a research article called ‘flat smacked converting to flat earthism’. and you talk about the role that youtube played in converting flat earthers. so what has your experience been in how different social media platforms contribute to how people accept science or like, digest theories that are controversial, things like that? 

asheley landrum (00:08:58) you know, social media platforms are communities now. some of them have a bunch of like, are broader used, especially at the beginning. i remember in its heyday, everybody was on facebook regardless of your age. you know, my grandmother who is 80 years old created a facebook page. you know, so you, you have pretty diverse audiences, but as platforms age or as there are more available, then you end up having different communities on them. on youtube, there’s a community of conspiracy theorists sharing videos about any conspiracy theory that you can think of. from there, it was either eric dubay or somebody around the same time who had sort of created a flat earth video sort of making an argument for flat earth. what was interesting is that almost everybody that we talked to said that they were first exposed to the flat earth conspiracy from watching videos on youtube. the only exceptions were people whose family members did and then introduced them to it. so it started off on youtube and then came off the platform to start bringing in family members and friends of those who are on youtube. they would start by watching conspiracy videos and then they would be suggested other conspiracy videos. and when they would present these facts, and i’m using quotes, air quotes there, right, “the facts of flat earth” to other people, they called it getting flat smacked because you’re just smacked with all this information at once. and so that’s where the title of that came from. and if you do watch eric dubay’s video, it’s like 200 proof that the earth is not a spinning ball or something like that. i think it’s been pulled off of youtube a bunch of times. but if you watch it, you’ll see it’s just like sort of argument after argument, and they’re so fast that you don’t really have, if you’re just watching it in real-time, you don’t have time to actually critically evaluate it. you just feel like you’re being overwhelmed with information that’s like, wow, like this is, this seems really legit when it’s not at all  

katie perkins (00:10:45) and so, is that kind of how you see that misinformation coming in over social media platforms regarding scientific communication? it just comes at you so fast that you don’t have time?

asheley landrum (00:10:55) so some cases, so that was, i mean that was the case with that. i think in addition to that, and probably more frequently for other types of science communication on platforms, things through memes or articles or shared stories. it’s people who are seeing misinformation that resonates with their worldview. so again, this is a, it’s an all-person thing. the acceptance of misinformation or acting in a political way is not something that’s true only for specific populations. it’s true of all populations. and the question is, is it something that’s gonna interact with your values or beliefs in a way that’s gonna make you respond in a way that’s not consistent with the evidence from science?  

katie perkins (00:11:32) so do you think that there is a way to not make issues like these political or is it just in their nature that in science media the science is gonna get polluted like you said earlier by political agendas?  

asheley landrum (00:11:45) right. so we can try to do what we can, we can’t control what everyone in the world says. and so, you know, political actors are gonna probably step in at some point and make things political. but we can at least try to not, you know, we can ask communication professionals who are doing this for a living to not make the problem worse. and it’s not, like i said, it’s not always predictable, it’s not always something we can stop. but there are circumstances where we know based on prior work, based on history, how something can happen. so, you know, we can do what we can, but once it’s like, once it’s really polarized like climate change, it’s very hard to come back from that without really strong messaging from a variety of different sources that tries to counteract that. and only over time, so trying to get younger generations to stop seeing climate change as a political issue and instead as a global and a human one.  

katie perkins (00:12:46) the last thing i have is, i was reading your most recent article about awe-inspiring scientific communication. could you tell us just a little bit more about awe and how it affects people?  

asheley landrum (00:12:56) yes. well, so we don’t know yet, right? so this is actually really exciting work. the paper you were referring to is one that we were looking at to see if we could measure people’s experiences of awe when engaging with, and in this case, it was reading science news stories and the stories that were, like several of them were written by ed yong because he writes in a very awe-inspiring way. but you know, other types of stories as well to see if we can measure awe. then the later goal will be to see – is this a style or a way of writing that might help increase openness to accepting science? but the aforementioned graduate student i told you about alex olshansky, his dissertation is also looking at how experiences of awe might limit people’s ability to counter-argue when being confronted with things like conspiracy theories.  

so if you are, if you are reading about a conspiracy theory or if you’re watching a video which seems to be more, more frequently the case and you have this experience of awe, is it taking more of your cognitive resources away from then being able to question what it is that you’re, that you’re watching? and it’s sort of a resource allocation question. and he has not done his analysis yet, but all of his data is collected. so it could have, it could be a double-edged sword, right? it could be a mechanism through which to get people excited and engaged with science, but it could also be a mechanism through which misinformation is spread.  

katie perkins (00:14:25) that was all super, super interesting and i think is really gonna interest a lot of people on planet forward. so yeah, just thank you so much for joining me today!

asheley landrum (00:14:33) thank you for having me.

the model is the first of its kind to factor in animals’ resting periods, allowing gps data to more accurately reflect the large amount of time wild cats are not walking from one location to another. other models can’t account for these periods, making this one ideal to give a clearer picture of the actual lives of feline predators.

“compared to other movement models, this model allows the animals to stay still,” said jun yan, a professor of statistics at uconn, in a virtual interview. “only a small portion of their life is spent moving.” 

the model is a “highly technical thing,” said thomas meyer, a professor in the department of natural resources and the environment, in a telephone interview. he emphasized the complexity behind factoring in resting periods, and explained that it is helpful in learning more about feline predators.

“you can’t manage something you don’t understand,” meyer said.

applying a new model

meyer is using the new model to study mountain lions across the country. it has allowed him to learn about how the species is affected by the changing seasons. he once hypothesized that mountain lions are impeded by adverse conditions during winter months. but his analysis of gps data with the new model yielded a surprise: the cats move the same distance in the winter despite harsher conditions.

he explained that researching mountain lions is important because they significantly benefit their ecosystems. species like deer, elk, and sheep would overpopulate and overgraze the land if mountain lions were not there. adequate research ensures that conservationists can take the steps necessary to best protect mountain lions and keep ecosystems balanced.

“apex predators are the keystone to keeping ecosystems healthy,” meyer said.

tracy rittenhouse, an associate professor in the department of natural resources and the environment, is incorporating the new model into her research on bobcats in connecticut. she is working with the connecticut department of energy and environmental protection (deep) to track and analyze bobcat populations in the state.

she is on year six of a project that involves tracking bobcats in connecticut using gps collars. she recently joined forces with the research team that includes yan and meyer to incorporate the new statistical model into her research.

in her original experiment design, the gps collars on the bobcats recorded and transmitted the animals’ locations once every four hours. to track the cats’ resting periods in accordance with the new model, the collars now record their locations every five, 10, or 15 minutes.

rittenhouse said that the model “changes our understanding of energy budgets,” as it will allow her team to learn more about how often the bobcats stay still and expend less energy.

her team is waiting to retrieve a few more gps collars before it starts analyzing the data. the collars are supposed to fall off the cats at the end of the research period, but rittenhouse will have to retrieve the ones that failed to do so by re-trapping the bobcats and manually removing the collars.

once they have recovered the collars, rittenhouse’s team will spend about a year or two analyzing the data, then write three to four papers worth of conclusions, she said. the results will be directly applicable to deep’s bobcat conservation strategies.

a meeting of the minds

“collaboration with deep is foundational to everything i do,” rittenhouse said. “that’s the applied ecologist in me.”

meyer’s and rittenhouse’s research on feline predators is collaborative in nature. meyer works with a biologist from panthera, a worldwide wild cat conservation organization. additionally, the development and implementation of the advanced tracking model brings together experts in both ecology and statistics.

“this particular line of research calls for mathematical firepower that basically no ecologists have,” meyer said.

the statistical model that enables this advanced research is the culmination of years of problem solving, said yan. he explained that the ability to account for resting periods is a breakthrough in statistics that allows for a model to better encapsulate the natural movement of animals.

“it’s been 10 years,” yan said. “we finally have a not perfect, but reasonable and practical, solution to this problem.”

my guest speakers include alexander weir, ph.d., a mycology professor at suny esf and russell briggs, ph.d., a soil professor at suny esf. with their help, i will take you on an investigative journey, as we reveal how valuable fungi are to humankind, and discuss the various hurdles we face to truly unlocking the full potential of fungi.

as vallejo-marin spoke to the harvard scholars in late 2021 about his goal to use a vibrating source to conduct a controlled study on the characteristics of pollination in different species of bees, an eager hand shot up in the audience. the hand belonged to noah jafferis, ph.d., a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university of massachusetts. jafferis felt that he could help vallejo-marin achieve his goal by using a completely novel bio-robotic bee to replicate certain types of pollination in experiments. vallejo-marin’s first thought was one of skepticism, as the two researchers come from entirely different scientific backgrounds, but the more they talked, the more they realized that their interests seem to intertwine perfectly.

in march 2022, within months of meeting each other, vallejo-marin and jafferis secured an $840,000 grant from the human frontier science program, an organization that promotes international interdisciplinary research related to living organisms.

“this is one of the best pieces of news that you can receive as a scientist,” vallejo-marin said, with excitement in his voice. “grant writing and getting funds in science is a very difficult process where there is a lot of chance, luck, and being in the right place at the right time.”

vallejo-marin’s biology lab in scotland is filled with the deafening sound of buzzing, which shakes the entire room with high-pitched vibrations. the source of this buzzing becomes clear as vallejo-marin walks over to a large tank in the corner of the lab, looking affectionately at the hundreds of yellow and black insects flying and landing on artificial flowers. the focus of this lab is buzz pollination, which is a fairly rare and under-researched type of bee pollination that is vital to the health and fertilization of over 20,000 plant species and crops across the globe.

“buzz pollination is used on many different plant species, including a number of crops that humans rely on for food sources such as tomatoes and blueberries,” vallejo-marin said. understanding how bees do it and which species do it could improve agriculture and help explain the importance of protecting rare species to maintain bee biodiversity.

not all bees buzz… pollinate

only certain bees can buzz pollinate, and only certain plants can be pollinated in this way. most bees pollinate by landing on flower petals and passively collecting pollen in the hairs on their bodies, which is then spread throughout the area as they fly. however, when the right kind of bee lands on the right kind of flower, the bee will contract the muscles in its thorax and start actively producing vibrations that make the entire flower shake. this motion causes the pollen grains inside to bounce back and forth and eventually shoot out of the flower.

“you can see a shower, almost like a jet stream of pollen coming out of the flower,” vallejo-marin said. “this happens in a fraction of a second, and it takes less than a hundred milliseconds for the bees to shake free thousands and thousands of pollen grains.”

the main challenge that vallejo-marin has faced throughout his research is determining the morphology of buzz pollinators. this information would allow him to decipher what enables buzz pollinators to biologically pollinate in this way, compared to species of bees that cannot produce buzz vibrations. 

“we know very little about what makes a bee buzz a certain way, whether it’s size or speed or ecology or a combination of all of those factors,” vallejo-marin said. he has found that it is extremely difficult to replicate the incredibly fast vibrations that a such a tiny insect produces on a flower. this is where dr. noah jafferis comes in, and this is where bee research will take a turn into the unknown.

creating the prototype

jafferis has been interested in bio-inspired microrobots since he was in graduate school at harvard university, where he helped develop a winged microrobot that was able to fly like a bee and simulate some of the aerodynamic aspects of insect flight. 

“the wings in those robo-bees were powered by piezoelectric actuators that bend back and forth, similar to the muscles that pull a bee’s wings back and forth,” jafferis said. “i realized that these same muscles also produce the vibrations for buzz pollination, and my microrobots may be able to help in mario’s research.”  

piezoelectric actuators are mechanical devices that take electrical energy and convert it directly into linear motion with high speed and force. unlike larger robotic mechanisms, these actuators would be able to vibrate the body of the micro-robotic bee with extreme accuracy and precision while still maintaining the weight and size of an actual bee. although the robo-bee pollinators are currently just prototypes, jafferis is confident that he will be ready to begin the coding process in the near future. 

over the next year, vallejo-marin will be using biomechanical equipment to analyze the buzz patterns of different bee species in his lab, even attempting to put tiny monitors directly on the bees to measure their movements during buzz pollination. 

“there is a variety of information that mario will be measuring, such as the frequency and amplitude of the vibrations in buzz pollination, which i can plug directly into our robo-bees and tell that to vibrate with the same frequencies and amplitudes,” jafferis said. 

but, what can these robotic bees actually tell researchers that living bees cannot, and how would the data influence bee conservation and crop production? 

bio-inspired robots have been utilized to study the behavior and anatomy of many animal species in recent decades, and their use is only growing as they are able to provide novel information that scientists have never before been able to retrieve.

“biomimetic robots enable us to control individuals in experiments, and we can pinpoint differences in the behaviors of live animals, which we cannot do in any other setting,” said david bierbach, a bio-robotics researcher, in a 2021 press conference at the university of konstanz.

jafferis believes that robotics could be the key to achieving detailed analyses of buzz pollination, illustrating how a bee’s characteristics affect their ability to buzz and what types of vibrations are most effective for pollination.

“we can’t tell an actual bee, ‘hey we want to see what happens if you let go of one of your feet,’ but with a robot we can,” jafferis said. “we can tell the robots to vibrate and grab flowers and do things in different ways that a bee is not doing on its own.”

the need for bees

bees are in a current state of worldwide decline, and their biodiversity is suffering in a way that may lead to the complete extinction of certain rare species in the near future.  

“we fear bee decline,” said michael roswell, ph.d., an entomologist at the university of maryland. “with 4,000 species of bees in the united states and 20,000 species on earth, we expect that some will be doing better than others at any given time, but we’re certainly afraid that many rare species are doing worse and worse.”

roswell published a study in april 2022 that highlighted the importance of rare bees in plant-pollinator networks. he and his team were able to show that less common species, many of which were buzz pollinators, often fertilize plants that more common species do not pollinate at all. roswell believes that vallejo-marin and jafferis’ study would expand his research in a way that could help to target bee conservation efforts towards the buzz pollinators that are most in need of protection and that are needed most by their ecological environments.

“we are trying to use this project as a platform to help people realize that not all bees are the same and that different bees do different jobs,” vallejo-marin said. “it is important to maintain the biodiversity of bees so that not just one or two species are doing well, because every species is vitally important.”

if the robotic bees are able to successfully replicate buzz pollination, they may be able to aid in sustainable methods of crop production as well.   

“if one bee species is suffering, the robots could tell us if there is another species that can fill in and pollinate these vital crops instead, or if we need to focus all of our resources on the conservation of that species,” jafferis said.

the researchers are optimistic that they will eventually be able to pair the optimal bee with the optimal crop, which would not only supply humans with an effective and environmentally conscious method of crop fertilization, but would also help bees to strengthen their populations in areas with bounties of plants that match their pollination styles.

over the next three years, vallejo-marin and jafferis will be working toward these sizable goals, combining their expertise to create a groundbreaking interdisciplinary device that may be able to positively influence bees, humans, plants, and the environment as a whole.  

“it is hard to work with bees and not fall in love with them,” vallejo-marin said. “they are such charismatic creatures, and once you care about them you will care about them forever.”

here, kossler is at the top of the food chain. as the vice president of ranch operations at turner enterprises (tei), kossler oversees all 15 ranches in turner’s 1.85 million-acre land empire and the 45,000 bison on them – the largest private bison herd in the world. growing up in the 1960s on a ranch in colorado, the experienced rancher is a living witness to over six decades of change in agriculture and the communities it sustains. with the rise of what he calls “additive agriculture,” kossler has seen farmers and ranchers grappling with declining profit margins, degrading land quality, and an exodus of youth from the industry. 

he explains that additive agriculture stems from the intensive use of chemical additives – fertilizers, pesticides – to increase monoculture agricultural yields. the results? short-term gains that compromise ecological integrity and long-term profitability. it’s a model where man allegedly triumphs over nature, and an industry standard that the turner institute of ecoagriculture is challenging. 

a delicate balance

according to the tei mission statement, turner enterprises has always had a triple bottom line of economic sustainability, ecological sensitivity, and conservation. the company’s goal is still profit, “but not at the expense of nature,” kossler said with emphasis. this “balance of conservation and commerce,” as kossler calls it, pushed tei toward implementing more holistic land management practices. years later, kossler finally matched tei’s guiding principles with a name: regenerative agriculture. 

unlike additive agriculture, regenerative agriculture is a set of practices that focus on maximizing productivity through restoring ecosystem services, like building healthy soil microbiomes, enhancing carbon sequestration and water infiltration, and supporting native ecosystem biodiversity. the connection was instant, kossler said, “i just knew this was the next step for [tei]. we were already doing a lot of it, but there was more we could do…it became a mission in our company.”

as a result, in 2021, kossler and the team at turner enterprises founded the turner institute of ecoagriculture as an agriculture research organization dedicated to “researching, developing, and disseminating sustainability strategies and techniques for conserving ecosystems, agriculture, and rural communities,” according to the institute.

driving across mcginley ranch is evidence that principles of regenerative agriculture have been embraced with open arms: pastures are divided uniquely to support high-intensity grazing, the lush meadows are grazed instead of hayed for the winter, and two fleeing prairie chickens signal a rebounding endangered population. the ranch aims to “lead by example” in the agriculture industry, turning a profit off the land while also actively supporting its regeneration. their products, kossler said, are of higher quality as a result of it. 

healthy soil, hard sell 

still, there are profound challenges ahead for the transition to more sustainable agricultural practices. 

“change is fearful,” kossler said, especially when there is a way things have always been done culturally ingrained in the agriculture community. “many are more comfortable doing something that’s not really working well,” he said, and what they’re doing is often reinforced by a higher education system that supports industrialized additive agriculture. “what we were taught was only half of the story – one side of a two-sided story. i feel as though i was only told half of the story.” 

financially, farmers and ranchers can also be put in a tight spot if they are seeking to transition. despite long-run increases in yield, the tight margins in agriculture can make it hard to front the initial cost of switching to regenerative practices due to upfront costs like fencing and the “three-year trough,” or a time of lower production while natural systems adjust to new agricultural practices. it can be a hard sell, and many “hardcore ag producers are skeptical,” kossler said, especially older generations. 

but in the fertile soils kossler and his team are growing, they’ve cultivated more than prairie grasses and carbon sinks: change is taking root. as the outliers in the equation, mcginley ranch and the turner institute of ecoagriculture have been in the business of influencing others to create “synergies” for change. “we’re kind of herd animals,” kossler said, and like bison, once some go, others will follow. 

the future of regenerative agriculture

in the sandhills, the dominoes have already begun toppling. after watching, then inquiring about the success of mcginley’s regeneratively-managed pastures, a nearby rancher has adopted what ranch techs mcginley say is the uncommon practice of grazing meadows instead of haying them for the winter. partnerships between the turner institute of ecoagriculture and research institutions, like south dakota state university’s center of excellence for bison studies, are changing the traditional understanding of agriculture in academia and adopting regenerative approaches. 

perhaps most importantly, younger generations are buying in. jessica lovitt, mcginley ranch’s primary range data specialist, is one of them. like many in agribusiness, lovitt started with very traditional cattle ranching on her family ranch. after coming to mcginley, she admits to harboring doubts, having “never seen things done [differently] before.” despite her reservations, she said, “the results speak for themselves,” and credits her traditional background for pushing her to ask more questions. now, she offers others the same advice: “get out and go see it for yourself…give it a chance. ask the questions.” 

lovitt embodies a critical generational transition that mcginley is investing in to help turn the tides: educating the younger generations helps bring viable paths of integrating regenerative practices into family agricultural operations. as the turner institute takes on more young staff and interns, kossler is hopeful that they will “go home and make some changes,” and the pace of progress will quicken. 

together, kossler and lovitt hope that private and government support can help alleviate the financial barriers for agricultural communities seeking to do right by themselves and by the land they live off. both are optimistic that 10 years from now, the rolling sandhills of nebraska will have healthier soils, pastures, and communities.

during my final semester at the george washington university, i performed a community-engaged research project focused on my hometown to complete my sustainability minor. reflecting on my origins in schuylkill county, i wondered about its future. i knew that as climate change worsens, people will seek safety in higher elevations and appalachia will become a prime destination for thousands of americans. how could schuylkill county residents prepare for this demographic change? what role should they play in creating a sustainable future for this beautiful area? through my research, i found that lessons from our past could give me those answers.

i grew up hearing stories of the wrongful hangings of innocent men who advocated for themselves and condemned bigotry in their community. the true intentions of the molly maguires, a secret society named after an irish widow who protested against english landlords stealing land from the irish, are debated to this day. the mollies were persecuted for their extreme union activism and accused of terrorism in central pennsylvania. john kehoe, later dubbed the “king of the mollies,” moved to schuylkill county in 1868 to work in the coal mines amidst a wave of irish immigration to the area. kehoe’s confidence in this new world was squandered shortly after his work began. irish miners were given the worst shifts in the most dangerous conditions, paid less than a living wage, and constantly berated by their superiors.

in response to this injustice, kehoe and other irish miners formed a sect of the ancient order of hibernians (aoh), a benevolent, irish catholic fraternal organization originally founded to support irish people battling oppression. when their wages were cut by 10% to 20%, frustrated miners decided to strike, resulting in the long strike of 1875, which ultimately failed. miners went back to work, but their determination frightened the owners who sought to control them to make a profit. 

the reading railroad company president felt threatened by the aoh’s advocacy work, so he hired renowned detective allen pinkerton to investigate. pinkerton, believing that some aoh members were also active “mollies,” sent an operative named james mcparlan undercover to link the entire aoh organization to the allegedly violent molly maguires. mcparlan’s testimony, where he claimed that dozens of innocent men conspired to murder and rewarded members for murder, sullied the aoh name and devastated the strength of the organization. mcparlan’s stories helped sentence twenty men, including john kehoe, to death by hanging. from his cell, john kehoe wrote, “thinking over the cruelties that has befallen me, by bribery perjury and prejudice … i am under the sentence of death. for a crime i never committed which i will prove to you.” the hanging of the “mollies” in schuylkill county was an act drenched in social, religious, and ethnic bigotry. the aoh were champions of union activism and their work to empower thousands of miners should not be forgotten.

“how do you take those strengths of those people and turn it into something that is brave now?” jeanne elberfeld, a licensed social worker, asked me as i interviewed her for my research. i asked elberfeld and two other schuylkill county residents what they desired for the community in the coming decades –– and what they felt we had the potential to achieve.

elberfeld said she envisions a community where people live collaboratively and cooperatively with one another; a community that thrives because the residents are united in common goals and communal success –– not individual gain. elberfeld and other research participants, including regina gargano, stressed the importance of unity.  

gargano, executive director of the county’s tourism bureau, emphasized the significance of using the county’s past as a teacher. she said the younger generation needs to break cycles of poverty and lack of development by electing changemakers and ridding our community of economic plans that do not serve us.

gargano recognized that reviving schuylkill county would be a difficult process, but her hope was contagious. when asked what we have the potential to achieve, she said, “our people here are special and they know how to create what they need. it’s just a matter of building the consensus on what it is we really need to prioritize and breaking down the parochialism that stifles unity among us. if we could apply this to dismantling the current power structure of our economic and political leadership and unite in trying to diversify that economic development, there’s no reason to believe it could not eventually succeed.”

when asked what she hopes for the future of the county, jessi trusky, a 23-year-old schuylkill county resident, said inclusivity. she advocates for an environment where newcomers are welcomed and accepted and everyone gets an equal say in what happens in our community. i believe this sentiment will go a long way when the county eventually adapts to a demographic shift.

during my conversations with these women, i learned that our desires for our community are not so different from those of our ancestors. we all want the same thing: to grow together as a united, loving community where everyone looks out for each other. with this in mind, it’s important to reflect on the legacy of john kehoe and the union activists who lost their lives fighting for equality and allow their bravery to motivate us in molding a more prosperous and sustainable future.

to answer jeanne’s question –– “ how do we do this?” –– i think it is made possible by listening to and respecting one another. by giving voice to all members of the community and inviting young professionals to grow with us. one way to do this would be to repurpose abandoned coal mines and give them new life as solar energy sites, recycling centers, or underground farms. this change would encourage investment in sustainable technologies, create jobs, reduce blight, and attract outsiders to work in the area.

appalachia should not be a forgotten region. our community is strong, determined, creative, and hopeful. my hope for the future of schuylkill county is that the next generation sees the results of these characteristics in action.

kelsey nyland, ph.d., a research scientist and adjunct professor at the george washington university department of geography, is studying permafrost through the u.s. national science foundation-funded project circumpolar active layer monitoring (calm). at the 2022 planet forward summit, she discussed long-term trends of warming and thaw in alaska, and the resulting impact on local ways of life.

learn more by reading kelsey’s research.

the university of mississippi recently joined the worldwide efforts to save honeybees and prevent pollinator extinction by becoming a pollinator friendly campus. as part of this campus initiative, umfs recently became home to the university of mississippi beekeeper club‘s honey bee hives.

club president katelyn pennington and staff advisor douglas sullivan-gonzalez reached out to field station director scott knight in 2019 to use part of their land for their 3 hives. knight said he was happy to help. the hives now reside on part of the 800 acres of land in an old yam field.  

“i love having students, helping with projects, and facilitating that,” knight says. “it’s really rewarding to inspire folks and getting them to come out to the field station, enjoying the property and using it.”

the field station benefits the bees by avoiding the use of insecticides as well as providing a pollinator garden full of wildflowers. the bees, however, are not the only ones benefiting from their new home. knight said he believes the bees have positively impacted the field station by pollinating their facility’s plants as well as teaching him the importance of pollinators and the dangers that come with their decline. 

“we are losing pollinators all over the world,” knight said. “there is a lot of debate as to why. it could be insecticide use or other pollutants that we are not even aware of. habitat loss is usually a factor in any animal that is beginning to disappear, and then there is a mite that is a problem for bees.”  

the um beekeepers have been tending the hives at its new location for one year, but the field station has been involved in pollinator research for about 5 years now. for instance, david wedge from usda natural products laboratory said his hives were at the field station to conduct research on natural mite repellent. he had read that the oil from mint leaves could be used as a natural repellent of mites, so the field station helped wedge in his experiment by planting mint and assisting with data collection. 

the beekeeper club is focused more on learning the art of beekeeping, but also play an active part in saving the bees. sullivan-gonzalez said he started um beekeepers organization when students heard he had hives and showed interest in learning about the hobby of beekeeping. he said the best way to help pollinators is to plant trees, shrubs and plants. 

“pollinators in general within the insect world have diminished drastically, and their loss represents a fundamental threat to the food chain,” he said. 

this new relationship between the umfs and the um beekeepers has made it possible to reduce the threat in a small way and move scientists closer to solutions. the field station has provided the trees, shrubs and plants needed to support pollinators, and it has allowed um to educate others on pollinator issues through hands-on experience.  

ultimately, this relationship has allowed the university of mississippi to become an important part of the global effort to save the bees. 

this might seem like something out of a climate scientist’s dream, an unattainable magical contraption. but chemists have already begun building the foundation of knowledge for this machine to become a reality. most recently, one study made a breakthrough: for the first time, researchers have mapped the molecular details of how the solar-powered reaction occurs.

“co2 is a very stable molecule,” said dr. tonü pullerits, professor of chemical physics at lund university and an author of the study. pullerits said that the first step to turning carbon dioxide into a more reactive, malleable substance, is transforming it to carbon monoxide.

“it will always cost you energy to go uphill from co2 to co. so, where can that energy come from?” said j. houston miller, a researcher not affiliated with the study and professor of chemistry at george washington university. “the best answer is the sun.”

the study, published last month in nature, comes from a large multi-national scientific collaboration of researchers from denmark, sweden, china and germany.

“what makes our work special is that we explain how this reaction goes on… in quite a detailed way,” pullerits said. “it was an exciting day when we realized that we can actually explain this.”

the researchers used two materials to drive the solar-powered reaction. the first is a covalent organic framework, or cof, that absorbs light, and serves as a structure where the conversion takes place. pullerits described cof as a “micro porous material.” the shape of the material gives it a large surface area, allowing it to efficiently absorb light, for example from the sun. as a light source, pullerits and colleagues shone laser pulses onto the cof. the second material is a catalytic complex containing the element rhenium, one of the rarest elements on earth. the complex is embedded in the cof, harnessing the light the cof absorbed to drive the reaction. pullerits said knowledge of the catalytic complex is not new, but the addition of the cof is.

the study found its answers through spectrometry, a method of analyzing a material using waves of light. this work determined precisely how the catalytic complex and cof work together to capture light and harness it to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, a feat no study had yet reached.

“we were using short laser pulses to follow the process. we triggered the reaction with one pulse of a laser, and with a second pulse slightly later, we could figure out what happened.” pullerits said.

in the study, light passed through the cof, and researchers observed what colors of light were absorbed and which weren’t. what colors a molecule will absorb reveal a lot about the molecule’s structure, miller said. 

the conversion from carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide requires adding electrons. the cof captures the light, and the light particles excite electrons, creating carbon monoxide. then, researchers studied the way the light particles triggered the electrons to join the reaction.

however, researchers were puzzled by some of their observations at first. they knew one light pulse generated only half the electrons necessary for the conversion, but the reaction was occurring nonetheless. where did the other half of the electrons come from?

then, the team had a breakthrough.

“we all of a sudden realized… we can store the extra electrons needed in the porous cof material. the previous pulses made a few additional electrons which are stored. the cof is charged,” pullerits said.

finally, the team understood how the reaction occurs. the cof was not only absorbing light, but also absorbing electric charge by way of storing electrons. the new porous material they introduced was the key to the reaction. and through their use of light spectrometry, they knew the exact mechanism of how it all worked. this detailed knowledge allows researchers to recreate the reaction and find ways to make it more efficient, moving closer to the dream device.

pullerits is modest about the implications of his work.

“my general picture of how science works and how it can hopefully help mankind… it’s like building a house. everybody brings in their brick and at the end somewhere there is going to be something that is very important, solving some practical question,” pullerits said. “i don’t dare to claim that our work is more than a brick in a wall, but it was important that we covered this area.”

pullerits envisions a future with a fully built house, or “a device that lets the sun shine on it and starts converting co2 to something more stable or usable.”

now, researchers can draft next steps.

pullerits continued: “now that we understand what is going on, we can start asking the question, ‘what could be done to make it better?’”

“this is an evolutionary field. people need to keep doing it because somebody’s going to make it work,” said miller. “we could have solar powered fans that essentially scrub the air all the time, but we need to do it soon.”

for pet enthusiasts, buying an exotic, rare or endangered species can be done legally, and many pet owners want to obey the law. the problem is that illegally obtained animals, captured from the wild, are often mixed in with legally obtained animals, making them indistinguishable to a buyer. moreover, sellers sometimes lie about a pet’s true origins.

to combat this, researchers from hong kong university have developed a forensic tool that could help both officials and pet buyers know the truth about an animal’s origins.

“imagine the government going to the bird market and requiring samples from bird owners and you could test to see whether these birds have actually been captive-bred or not,” said caroline dingle from hong kong university, co-lead author of a recent study in animal conservation that describes the technology.

for now, dingle and her colleagues have only developed the tool for one species — the yellow-crested cockatoo (cacatua sulphurea), a critically endangered parrot native to indonesia — but it could be developed for other species.

if the technology is fully realized and applied, it would mean a massive step toward properly identifying illegally captured animals and cracking down on the illegal pet trade.

it’s all in the diet

to uncover an individual bird’s origin, the researchers turned to stable isotope analysis, a technique previously used for research ranging from bird migration studies to the diets of prehistoric humans.

stable isotope analysis allows researchers to see the levels of carbon and nitrogen present in a cockatoo’s feathers, which is influenced by the animal’s diet. the difference in these levels between wild and captive cockatoos is wide enough to from a single feather, and works due to the fundamental differences in the diets of wild and captive-raised cockatoos.

“if they are eating things that are mostly [from] grassland areas, they would have a different [carbon] signature than if they were eating off of a forest habitat,” dingle said. “if you’re an herbivore, you have very low levels of nitrogen, and if you’re a top predator, you have very high levels of nitrogen.”

the researchers specifically used feathers because they are inert tissues, meaning the isotope values detected from them represent the diet of the bird when the feather was growing. this offers a view of the bird’s diet over a long period of time, which helps determine if a bird was born in captivity or stolen from the wild.

sometimes the stable isotope analysis isn’t conclusive enough. it requires grinding up the bird’s feather, which is then tested for the average nitrogen and carbon levels. when the differences in just carbon and nitrogen values are too ambiguous, the researchers turn to compound-specific isotope analysis.

this analysis allows them to examine the carbon values of the specific amino acids of a specimen, giving them more data to determine if the bird was wild-caught or captive-bred.

“instead of getting one value from the tissue, you can get 10 to 12 values from the tissue,” dingle said. “we know that the isotopes from those amino acids represent something in their diet.”

to test the forensic tool, the researchers collected feathers from captive and wild populations of yellow-crested cockatoos in hong kong, noting if the bird was wild or captive. the species isn’t native to hong kong, but a local population now exists due to the release of birds, both accidental and deliberate, from the pet trade. the researchers conducted their isotope analysis on these feathers and were able to identify the bird’s origin even from random samples.

surveying bird markets, the researchers found more yellow-crested cockatoos for sale than had been legally imported over the past 13 years, according to data from cites, the global wildlife trade convention. the new forensic tool could identify the true origin of these birds, as there are often reports of poachers stealing the protected cockatoos right out of nests in hong kong.

the illegal wildlife trade is massive. a 2016 united nations report valued it at between $7 billion and $23 billion per year. punishment can be severe in some countries: five to 10 years in prison in the u.s., and 10 years in jail and a $1.2 million (10 million hong kong dollars) fine in hong kong. however, in many countries, convictions of such crimes are rare, and penalties often light.

the implementation question

although the forensic technology successfully distinguished between wild and captive-bred cockatoos based on the collected feathers, the researchers say there’s still work to do before governments should start implementing this testing.

on the upside, stable isotope analysis is cheap and fast compared to other types of testing, the researchers say. once you have a tissue sample, in this case a feather, and the machine necessary to carry out the analysis, the results are ready by the next day.

however, the compound-specific isotope analysis is somewhat of an emerging technology, meaning acquiring the necessary machinery is more difficult. additionally, this deeper look requires a few weeks to yield a result, but dingle said that’s still quite fast compared to other types of testing.

dingle said the next step is simply more testing. speaking as a self-described “overly cautious scientist,” dingle said the technology is novel and exciting, but before it is accepted as forensic evidence in any court, there need to be more trials.

it’s possible to develop the test for other animals, although it will require time to establish baselines for each species’ isotope values, according to dingle. this requires collecting many samples from both wild and captive animals, which can take several years.

“it took about five years for us to get enough wild cockatoo samples,” said astrid andersson, the other co-lead author of the study and a postgraduate researcher at hong kong university. “and they’re right in the center of hong kong … it wasn’t that hard, not as hard as going to find them in the wild.”

in hong kong, feathers from wild birds can be collected from the ground, and those from captive birds can be obtained from willing pet owners. for something like tigers, andersson said, it would be far more difficult to collect enough wild tissue samples to build a baseline picture of their diet.

but given enough samples, from both wild and captive animals, researchers can develop a robust stable isotope analysis for theoretically any animal, as long as the wild and captive diets are sufficiently different. animals whose diets change seasonally pose a slight challenge, but a baseline of the isotope values can still be established with enough testing.

the tool even works with humans. dingle noted that a professor at hong kong university performed an isotope analysis on himself when he was in the united states and again when he was back in hong kong, and there was a clear difference. in the u.s., he had a very corn-based isotope profile, while in hong kong, his isotopic values changed to reflect a rice-based diet.

besides pushing for the development of this forensic tool, dingle said she’d like to see owners of rare or exotic pets educate themselves on where the animals come from.

“we surveyed pet owners, and a lot of people aren’t really aware that a species that they own are threatened somewhere else. and that there’s a potential that by buying a pet bird or pet frog or lizard, that you could be contributing to that decline,” she said. “there’s just a disconnect, people think that it came from a pet shop so it’s bred just like a dog or a cat.”

with stable isotope analysis not yet available for pet owners or prospective buyers to verify the provenance of their animals, dingle suggests just asking for paperwork from the seller. in their survey of pet owners, dingle and andersson found most owners aren’t even aware that paperwork exists to confirm an animal has been raised in captivity.

“the [hong kong] government is looking for support and ways to deter [animal trafficking] from happening in the city, and i’m sure in other parts of the world it’s the same,” andersson said. “this tool can be part of that solution.”

citation:

andersson, a. a., gibson, l., baker, d. m., cybulski, j. d., wang, s., leung, b., … dingle, c. (2021). stable isotope analysis as a tool to detect illegal trade in critically endangered cockatoos. animal conservation. doi:10.1111/acv.12705