When Rachel Miller was shadowing a pie scientist in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, no one — not her teachers, not her parents, and certainly not she herself — could have predicted that her high school job shadow would lead to possibly the coolest summer internship in the universe: tasting ice cream in France.
When the Earth burps, WeiLi Hong listens. Whether Earth’s gaseous emissions bubble up from “mud volcanoes” on the planet’s surface or seep out of fissures on the ocean floor, the Oregon State University Ph.D. student has his monitoring gear to the ground.
“There was just a low fence around the tank, and you could literally reach over and throw the ring,” recalls Albertson, a Ph.D. student in Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute. “She kept coming back to me. It was a neat connection. It really made an impact on me.”
A dolphin’s dorsal fin can be as distinctive as a human fingerprint. As the fin slices through the sea, its unique pattern of pigments, nicks and scars relays the animal’s personal story to observers on the surface. Often, scientists can use these markings to ID individual dolphins. But for some species, fin IDs are not precise enough. That’s why researchers like Oregon State University Ph.D. student Rebecca Hamner have turned to DNA.
Just as technology links the world economy and events echo within minutes across the globe, researchers collaborate across international boundaries in ways unimaginable only a generation ago.
The resilience of the women was surprising, as was their appreciation for just being heard. After all, they are at the bottom of the social hierarchy in one of the world’s poorest countries. No one had shown much interest in their stories until an Oregon State University student showed up last winter.