 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectromosi 16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Elisa Anderson. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. In our show this time, we'll visit the 13th annual Ecological Dissertations in Aquatic Sciences Symposium. Our host Ethan Allen did two likable science talk shows and was then on a panel about reporting science to the media. The symposium seeks to bridge interdisciplinary gaps in aquatic ecology. This includes fostering cross-disciplinary interaction, familiarizing researchers with research areas and funding opportunities, and highlighting and publishing their work. These symposia are held at the east-west center near the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, SOEST, at UH Manoa. Few institutions have formal mentoring programs and many scientists are largely on their own when making sensible career choices. A key element of the symposium is to help them on career choices. Scientists are challenged to reach across disciplinary lines and come away with new possibilities for research partnerships and a new appreciation of interdisciplinary research. Formal presentations occupy much of the symposium. Each presentation devotes roughly equal time to the formal presentation and to Q&A and open discussion. The last part of the symposium involves working groups. The goal of these groups is to identify the most challenging research issues and funding directions. Of course, given this great opportunity, Ethan Allen and aquatic scientists participated and talked with other participants of this year's symposium to get a taste of the aquatic ecological research being done by researchers from around the country and to discuss how their work impacts our lives. The discussion involves some scientific hot-button terms and issues. Ecology, environment, microbes, eukaryotes, algae, metabolism, genetic diversity, variability, spectra, biomass, temperate and tropical environments, streams, insects and much more. In short, these ecological relationships are critical to help us understand environmental changes on our planet and to develop strategies to cope with those changes. For that purpose, Ethan conducted two of his likable science talk shows at the symposium. One was live and broadcast with our live-view transmission equipment. It featured Bryce Gunnert of City College of New York on characterizing spectral variability from sea to space. If you didn't know it, the upper 10 meters of the ocean contain as much mass as all of the Earth's atmosphere. When you think of algae, not all of the pigments that they have, but some of them will dissolve into water. And so you can see that pigment signature in your dissolved organic matter pool. But there's other, I always liken it to, if you're in a temperate area and you go look at some of the lakes and streams, sometimes there's a kind of black color of the water. In fact, some of the marshes that you see around the country have black water in the title of the name of the area. And so is the essential material that's being produced by these systems. And it can vary based on the general structure of the material and also where it comes from. So where it comes in is that those microbes are both utilizing that material, so changing its properties and changing its color and then also producing their own color signature. That's generally the setup for it, but a lot of these issues, especially the harmful algal blooms like the red ties that you talk about are exacerbated by climate change. So a warming system changes in sort of the basics of how it functions will ripple up into these bloom events. And I think Sarah could probably speak to that a lot because what you do is looking at that really small scale change, right? Bryce was joined by Sarah Hu of USC on genetic characterization of microbial eukaryotic diversity and metabolic potential. From her, we learn that microbial eukaryotes are capable of almost anything. I essentially study microbes that live in the ocean. And my specialty is single celled microbial eukaryotes, so there's prokaryotes and eukaryotes. And so I study the diversity of these microorganisms in our ocean systems, and I'm striving to understand why they're in certain locations, their diversity in a community and their overall ecological impact in that system. There's going to be a mix of variables that come into play for what causes the bloom. And we're still trying to understand that in certain systems. I'm not as familiar with what's going off the coast of Florida, but I haven't been personally studying that right now. It's typically a mix of temperature, nutrients, wind at a given time, and what's been the temperature in the last month in an area can also impact, lead up to potential bloom environment. What kind of advice do you have for aspiring scientists, maybe people just starting out in college or in community colleges, to help them along? I would say find role models. I think role models can be a great way to find your passion in a way. See someone who you look up to or you feel like your interests align and that's someone that you can ask advice of and that's someone who can also serve as a mentor perhaps that can lead you to where new opportunities might be so you can pursue your passion. The second talk show featured Whitney Beck of Colorado State University on a mechanistic understanding of algal biomass accrual in freshwater streams. She learned how to make an underwater electric fence to exclude herbivores from algal plots, which she said was challenging, terrifying, and very rewarding. My project is about stream algae. I study freshwater algae that grow on rocks. You might have been fishing or swimming in streams or lakes and got it caught in your fishing line or slipped in a stream because it's so slippery from the algae. I study nutrients in streams, so fertilizers that may become from agricultural fields or wastewater treatment plants and how they influence the growth of algae and how to prevent issues with water quality like what we're seeing in Florida, for instance, some of the freshwater streams where there's a lot of nutrients and that's fueling growth and leading to fish kills and things like that. So I'm conducting experiments to try to understand how algal growth responds to nutrients under different conditions like different temperatures and stream flows and things like that. So it involves a lot of field experiments up in the beautiful Colorado mountains, but also some quantitative models from larger data sets. We spend so much time and money collecting this data and then if it's just going to sit on a shelf somewhere, it's useless. But when you get people who know streams and lakes and coastal areas together in one room, we can really take a big picture view across those ecosystem types. I'm really excited to be working with this group. There was a really great program at my university that was funded by the National Science Foundation. So I came in as a fellow in this program and it was meant to get atmospheric scientists, watershed scientists and social scientists to collaborate together on water issues. So I made friends in engineering and atmospheric scientists who I've been able to work with on different projects and that's been so helpful at my university and I'm extending the net here at EcoDays. Incoming students at the undergraduate or graduate level who are interested in doing research and one regret I have in graduate school is that I did not bring in partners, stakeholders who would be using my research until the very end of the project. And we've been taught more and more as graduate students that that's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to help let the people that are going to be using your research help you formulate your research questions and participate and work in the field with you and that sort of thing. And so rather than just publishing an article and hoping that someone uses it, I would encourage people to get the users involved early, whether that be talking to your local state water quality managers or local non-profits or even environmental education groups. If you have modules you're producing, for instance, get people involved in what you're doing and excited about it. Whitney was joined by Erin Larson of Cornell University on functional and taxonomic diversity responses to disturbance in tropical and temperate montane streams. She found that stream insects are surprisingly resilient to disturbance. Traits can provide some interesting mechanistic insights into individual disturbance responses. I work a little bit up in scale from Whitney in terms of the animals that I study. So I work on stream insects. So if you've ever gone fly fishing, whatever you tied on the end of your line, like a Mayfly, Catus fly, Stone fly is what I study. Also mosquitoes, true flies that you might not like quite as much. And so what I try to understand are the processes that shape how many different species of those types of stream insects we find in a stream, especially things like landslides or floods or other types of what we call disturbances that might influence whether we see a lot of different types of bugs in one stream or just a few. When we think about aquatic insects, a lot of people think about mosquitoes or black flies or some of the more mean to humans aquatic insects that'll bite you or transmit disease and things like that. But actually a lot of aquatic insects play a really important role in the carbon cycle. So when we think about those headwater streams, you might often think about a stream that has trees over it. And so when those leaves fall off the trees and go into the stream, the insects are the ones that are eating the leaves and playing a really important role in how carbon is transported in the system. They also feed birds when they hatch out of the stream in their aerial farm. They're little like nutrient bags. They have a bunch of fatty acids in them. They're really important for a lot of bird populations and spiders. We don't have as much data on aquatic insects as we do on terrestrial insects. So things like bumblebees or other important insects like that. But we do know that when pesticides get into streams, they can kill a lot of the insects that live in streams as well. We have seen some evidence that pesticides and other types of pollution are affecting aquatic insects. We know that it affects aquatic insects in that different ways of basically hurting bugs home so harming or rearranging streams in different ways does affect their biomass or the amount of them that we find in a stream. But we don't right now have quite enough data to do those really big global scale synthesis of like, OK, do we know that aquatic insects are declining? My sense is yes. And I'd love to explore that further with my research. Yeah, it's been fun to meet a lot of different folks thinking about aquatic systems, especially since we both study streams, meaning some people who think more about saltwater systems and, you know, the ocean or coastal estuaries and things like that and how the processes that are going on there might be different. But of course all your streams ultimately, ultimately they all feed in the ocean, right? It all goes to the ocean, exactly. There's classical ecology lessons, right, that everything is connected to everything else. After these two talk shows, Ethan participated on a panel with Marcy Grubowski of SOEST and Nathan Eagle of Civil Beat, moderated by graduate student Chrissy Rempel. The subject was how scientists can deal with the media. When I talk with a researcher, I generally try to take out all jargon. And then if you take out all jargon, I think you can pretty much explain most science concepts with, you know, a third graders vocabulary, essentially. So I have a third grader. So I generally do the kyla test. Could kyla understand what I'm talking about? So I will break it down to pretty basic descriptions. Right. I think it's true that a lot of people do not have much background in science. And jargon will very rapidly lose them. They don't understand some key term that's central to your talking points. They're not going to get your, they're not going to understand why you're saying what you're saying. So you've got to be sure. I often start my shows out with actually defining a couple of key terms that if there is sort of a general jargon term that's going to be used. I love when I have the heads up and not it was just published because you like to break the news. Press releases sometimes. The issue with that is journalists like to have scoops or very scoop hungry. So if it's going to everyone, everyone's already got it. Okay, let's do something more original. Also, we try to do stuff a little bit more in depth than press release. So I might take the press release as an idea for a story and be like, oh, let's look into this like a lot more broadly. Sources like you're saying scientists, you know, will be like, hey, you know, I've saw you were covering this for a while. I don't know if you're aware, but this study is coming out soon. It kind of fits in what I've been seeing you write about. That's super helpful. Typically, I actually try after, after initial conversation, find out what the person wants to talk about because to me, that's really going to drive it. It is what the person is passionate about, what they care about, what they want to talk about because I found that's what comes through on television is the excitement, the passion, the dynamic aspect of it. And then I'll typically just make up a set of anywhere from eight to a dozen questions, like sort of called scaffolding questions. And just sort of general questions to help keep some of a structure to the conversation and not let us get too far afield. Don't really expect them to answer them specifically, but they give us more talking points to what they are. That's really how I tend to do it. It varies wildly from one story to the next. I might need to write that story in like an hour and a half and I'll be just calling me like I need to send expertise on this. But when I do have the luxury of having more time, it's going to be for something bigger. I'll reach out to the sources I want to connect with. I'll tell them, I don't give questions in advance, but I'll say like this kind of area of our focus or this is going to be my angle. I'll also welcome or invite like, if you have any other background materials that you can give me and ahead of time, I'd like to do my homework, you know, kind of learn as much as I can. I'm never going to become the expert. That's why I'm interviewing the experts. But I do like to do my homework on it when I can so that I can have a better conversation and kind of get to more of the crux of it. I'd like to actually add by pointing out a story I was just reading about that we as scientists, of course, know that you don't want to go into hospitals because hospitals are filled with nasty germs that you can then get these ugly infections and they kill you, right? And we all know that germs are all on the surfaces that are constantly trying to clean and germs that other doctors are coughing out or whatever. But they recently actually, a study was done where they tracked these infections that hospital patients were getting and tracked the genomic lineage of the germs that were infecting them. And it turned out virtually all of them were essentially their own gut bacteria. Have points ahead of time that you know you want to make and if you need to just keep going back to those points. And if somebody asks you something you're either not willing to answer, not qualified to answer, totally fine to say I don't know or that's not really my expertise or you could talk to this person. It's, there's nothing wrong with saying any of that. I would say you don't feel like you have to get back into it. You can just say that's not something I'm able to answer or something along those lines. As you could see, the discussion was important and valuable not only for the scientists who came from and to Hawaii to participate in it, but also for those like us who were there to observe. It was all completely likable science. Want to know more about the annual ecological dissertations in aquatic sciences symposium? Check out ecodos.org. Want to watch slankable science hosted by Ethan Allen from our downtown studio? Tune in to thinktecawaii.com at 2 p.m. every Friday or check it out on youtube.com. And now let's check out our ThinkTech schedule of events going forward. ThinkTech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends and some people listen to them all night long. 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We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. And now here's this week's ThinkTech commentary. Hi, welcome to Seymour's World Commentary on ThinkTech Hawaii. Our topic today is do you count your blessings? The concept is one we all understand but sometimes it's really hard to find what is good when times are tough. When times are difficult, both professionally and personally, that is the time when we really need to work to see this situation in a different perspective. It's not easy because being grateful is not a must in our lives, yet being able to see our different issues in a different light is the best way to move forward. I have often described true gratitude as a quiet state of inner calm where you are truly thankful for what you have, not what you don't have in life. The reality is that there is no true perfection and life is filled with its ups and downs, the good, the bad, and everything else in between. Once we realize that there is a purpose to it all, we begin the process of counting our blessings. Look at it this way. If you are grateful, more is given. If you are not, more is taken away. If you constantly look for the good things in your life and appreciate what you have, you create a sense of happiness that will give you the perspective of gratefulness. Here are some easy tips. If you identify with a negative thought, say you are stuck in traffic, switch to something positive like now you have time to call a friend. Try to be thankful every day. Learn to recognize that life is full of those ups and downs, be thankful for the ups and realize that you can maneuver through the downs because that is just part of our lives, our journey. It is called full spectrum gratitude, where acceptance of the good and bad becomes a new standard in how we live. Next, try this one. Begin a daily reflection. It could be meditation, which I do as often as possible, or just lying in bed at night, thinking about my day and remembering all the good things that happened. Try to make a point of remembering those who have helped you. Let's look at all the baddest challenges and begin the process recognizing the path to overcome those challenges. If we understand that challenges are the catalyst for growth, we then are much better prepared to overcome the negatives. So my friends, if you can count your blessings, you will create a circle of connectivity that fosters joy and fulfillment. That is the profound recipe for happiness. Now I have to tell you, this commentary is the last of my series on Think Tech Hawaii, as I'm progressing to my own YouTube channel and blog postings. I want to thank Jay Fidel and all the staff here at Think Tech who have made my commentaries much more successful than I ever imagined. I hope you will continue to send me your comments as I always say, I learn as much from you as you learn from me. Aloha from Seymour's World. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of Think Tech, but first we want to thank our underwriters. The Atherton Family Foundation, the Center for Microbial Oceanography, Research and Education, Collateral Analytics, The Cook Foundation, The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, Hawaii Energy, The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, The Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Hawaiian Electric Company, Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, Galen Ho of BAE Systems, Integrated Security Technologies, Kamehameha Schools, Wayne Kurisu, Carol Mon Lee and the Friends of Think Tech, MW Group Limited, The Scheidler Family Foundation, Shreem LLC, The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust, Volo Foundation, Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks to you all. Okay, Cynthia. That wraps up this week's edition of Think Tech. Remember, you can watch Think Tech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it just like Cynthia does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more Think Tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on Think Tech, visit thinktechhawaii.com, be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our Think Tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii, and of course, the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important Think Tech episode. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. Aloha, everyone.