Trina McMahon is a civic engineer and microbiologist. She studies microbial communities in lake water and wastewater treatment plants and tends to approach problems from an engineering perspective.

There is some discussion in this episode about the “Super Bowl Halftime Flush,” the phenomenon of thousands of Americans flushing the toilet during halftime, with the potential to damage municipal water pipes with the sheer volume of sudden water consumption. Though the halftime does incur significant peaks of water usage, the damage is unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) an urban legend. Water treatment plants generally have bigger fish to fry than the Super Flush. Like morning showers and flooding.

Click here to read more about Trina’s work.

Research specialist Celeste Mezera wears many hats. Like a beekeeping hat. Or a cute crocheted strawberry. She’s also worked in outreach, and currently works at the Wisconsin Energy Institute, where she keeps a lab running day to day.

The paper and graphics discussed in this episode are linked here.

Third year PhD student Sam Davison studies isobutanol, a jet-grade fuel fermented by the same yeast that puts the bubbles in bread and the ethanol in wine. This episode is perfectly on topic as we discuss brewing, gorillas, ocean acidification, and Pokémon.

To read more about Sam Davison’s work, and the work of other researchers at the Wisconsin Energy Institute, visit the WEI website. His gorilla paper is linked here.

P.S.: There’s some confusion in this episode about the term “bird focal.” Turns out it probably refers to the practice of choosing bird species representative of the overall ecosystem. Read more about it here.