Dale Blasingame, an assistant professor of practice in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the era of deep fakes.

Deep fakes refer to the use of artificial intelligence applications to create convincing, lifelike audio and video reproductions of individuals, often celebrities. Crucially, the deep fakes can behave in ways without the approval or consent of the individual being faked and can be misused for fake product endorsements, political gain or even pornography. The technology behind deep fakes is advancing so rapidly that even experts are finding it increasing difficult to tell the difference between fakes and reality.

Blasingame received the 2017 Presidential Excellence Award for Teaching and the 2023 Presidential Excellence Award for Service at TXST. He is a part of the Digital Media Innovation faculty, and he teaches courses that introduce students to different aspects of how technology is changing journalism, media and marketing. Before joining TXST, Blasingame was a television news producer. He spent nine years at WOAI-TV in San Antonio, where he won two Lone Star Emmy awards and was nominated for a third. Before that, he was a news anchor and sports reporter for KTSA-AM in San Antonio. Blasingame is a member of the Online News Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

FURTHER READING:

What to know about the rise of AI deepfakes
California Bans Political ‘Deepfakes’ during Election Season
AI is fuelling a deepfake porn crisis in South Korea. What’s behind it – and how can it be fixed?

Texas State University’s Joe Aebersold, team leader for Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss his work imaging samples of the asteroid Bennu returned to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx mission.

After the mission team recovered the sample return cannister from its landing site in the Utah desert, Aebersold acquired the imagery in his role as a grant specialist with TXST’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs’ (ORSP) Johnson Space Center Engineering & Technical Support (JETS) program. He and his colleague Erika Blumenfeld are charged with documenting the samples with high-resolution photography and 3D models before the materials—which range in size from large pebbles to dust—are distributed to eager researchers.

Aebersold graduated from TXST in 2016 with a geographic information science degree. His journey to NASA began with a 2015 internship working on NASA’s astronaut photography cataloging program through ORSP-JETS. That internship led to another in the summer of 2016 to work with Jacobs Engineering’s Image Science Analysis Group. There he learned to operate a structured light scanner to make 3D models. In 2017 Jacobs hired him to a full-time position, paving the way to his current role with NASA.

FURTHER READING:

TXST alum shares views of rare NASA asteroid samples with the world

OSIRIS-REx images

Astromaterials 3-D

General NASA image database

Texas State University’s Jenna Walker , director of Watershed Services with The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor and predict the water quality along Texas’ 367 miles of coastline.

A 2022 study found that 55 out of 61 beaches tested along the Texas Gulf coast exceeded safe levels of fecal bacteria on at least one testing day. Enter The Meadows Center. Using its existing network of citizen scientists in the volunteer Texas Stream Team program, the center is regularly collecting water samples from locations along the coast and using innovative AI technology to analyze the data and predict bacteria levels and trends. Ultimately this is expected to make real-time information available to the public.

Walker oversees several multi-year, grant-funded research initiatives, including the Texas General Land Office-sponsored Clean Coast Texas initiative, a Texas Hill Country groundwater/surface water interaction research series, the Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan, and the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality-sponsored Texas Stream Team – an award-winning, statewide community science program designed to educate and empower the public to support watershed protection efforts and foster community-based partnerships.

FURTHER READING:

Texas Stream Team

How dirty are Texas beaches? Researchers are using AI to better track bacterial levels.

The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment

Texas State University’s Bob Fischer, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the ethics of insect sentience.

The debate over animal sentience has persisted for centuries. Broadly speaking, it’s generally accepted that mammals, reptiles, birds and fish have degrees of sentience—that is, they are conscious and can feel both pleasure and pain. But what about insects? Fischer explains that mounting evidence indicates that at least some insects exhibit behavior attributable to pleasure and pain responses. If so, then what are the ethical implications for the billions of interactions between humans and insects every day?

Fischer earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 2011. He is a senior research manager for Rethink Priorities and the director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals.

Texas State University’s Karl Stephan, a professor in the Ingram School of Engineering, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss his research into the mysterious phenomenon of ball lightning.

A poorly understood natural phenomenon, ball lightning has been reported throughout history. Ranging in size from a pea to a basketball, the glowing orbs can appear in various colors, either transparent or translucent. Ball lightning has been reported at ground level and by airplanes. The spheres can last for many seconds, unlike the brief flash of traditional lightning, and can hover, rise, fall or move against the wind in unpredictable ways. No satisfactory hypothesis has described the cause of ball lightning and researchers have yet to successfully recreate it under laboratory conditions.

Stephan joined the TXST faculty in 2000 after an extended period teaching at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He earned his master of engineering degree from Cornell University in 1977 and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983.

FURTHER READING:

Ball Lightning Eyewitness Report

Texas State Researcher Sheds Light on Ball Lightning

What is ball lightning, a reality or myth?

Modeling the Neuruppin Ball Lightning Incident

Have You Seen Ball Lightning? Scientists Want to Know About It

Texas State University’s Christopher Johnson, a clinical professor in the Department of Sociology, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss understanding Alzheimer’s disease as a type of time travel.

Johnson developed the “Time Travel” model to better explain the variable memory loss of people suffering from Alzheimer’s. Those afflicted by Alzheimer’s experience cognitive, emotional, social, physical and functional regression. The “Time Travel” model uses aspects of Piaget's theory of adult development in reverse, suggesting a non-linear regression but rather connecting loops spiraling downward to depict the fluctuating regression as more recent memories are lost and the individual descends deeper into the past. The insight this model provides will hopefully increase the understanding of gerontologists and caregivers and provide new ways to develop strategies to enhance future caregiving techniques.

Johnson served as director of gerontology for the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Louisiana for 27 years. While there, he developed an award-winning master’s in gerontology online course, which earned the distinction of being designated one of the top academic programs in the state. Johnson retired from ULM and traveled to Scotland to teach for a year and a half in the University of Stirling’s dementia studies program before joining TXST to help develop the nation’s first master of science degree program in dementia and aging studies.

FURTHER READING:

Texas Standard: Why The US, And Texas, Need To Catch Up When It Comes To Dementia Care

Memory Whisperer

Alzheimer's Speaks

Texas State University’s Richard Robichaux, a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss his career path, teaching acting for television and movies and his upcoming projects.

A native of East Texas, Robichaux George Pappas on David E. Kelley's “Big Shot” with John Stamos and Yvette Nicole Brown on Disney+. Later this year he will appear in the feature films “The Long Game,” which won the audience award at SXSW, as well as “Hit Man,” a new film with Glen Powell. Other film credits include “Ocean’s 8” with an all-star cast and “Where’d You Go Bernadette?” with Cate Blanchett. Robichaux has worked on five films with award-winning director Richard Linklater, including “Boyhood,” which was nominated for six Academy Awards and won the Golden Globe for Best Picture. His theatre credits include the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., Yale Repertory Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and great theatres in New York, California and everywhere in between. Last fall he directed “The Thin Place” at the Zach Theatre in Austin.

As a speaker and educator Robichauz is a passionate advocate for arts education. He has been a guest artist and teacher at many of the top programs in the country including Yale University, Juilliard, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California San Diego where he was the Arthur and Molli Wagner Endowed Chair in Acting. During his tenure at UCSD it was ranked the No. 3 program in the world by the Hollywood Reporter. He has delivered keynote addresses and conducted masterclasses for students and teachers at dozens of conferences, festivals and schools. He is also a judge for the College Television Awards presented by the Emmys. He is a member of the Television Academy, SAG-AFTRA, Actors Equity and Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

FURTHER READING:

Lone Star roots bring Richard Robichaux to Texas State theatre faculty

RichardRobichaux.com

Texas State University’s Shelly Wernette, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss her discovery of 10 new species of extinct trilobites in Thailand and what those discoveries reveal about ancient world geography.

Trilobites are extinct sea creatures that rolled up like some types of armadillos or rolly pollies and breathed through their legs. Fossils of the creatures were trapped in sandstone between layers of petrified ash, created by volcanic eruptions that settled on the sea floor and formed a green layer called a tuff. Unlike some other kinds of rocks or sediment, tuffs contain crystals of zircon — a mineral that formed during eruptions and are, as the name of the rock layer containing them suggests, tough. Zircon is chemically stable as well as heat and weather resistant. It is hard as steel and persists when minerals in other kinds of rocks erode. Inside these resilient zircon crystals, individual atoms of uranium gradually decay and transform into atoms of lead. Radio isotope techniques enable researchers like Wernette to determine when the zircon crystals formed and thus put a date range to the volcanic eruption that laid down the tuff formation.

Wernette studies stratigraphy and invertebrate paleontology with special attention to the lower Paleozoic of Gondwana and trilobites. She is interested in how the physical earth affects biodiversity, relying heavily on paleogeography and geochronology to frame this investigation. She earned her doctorate in geological sciences from the University of California Riverside, and her bachelor’s and master’s, both in geology, from the University of Oklahoma.

FURTHER READING:

Trilobites of Thailand's Cambrian–Ordovician Tarutao Group and their geological setting

Trilobites rise from the ashes to reveal ancient map