International Programs

Sam Chan, an OSU Extension invasive species
expert, will lead a three-state delegation of invasive species,
restoration, and science education and communications experts on an
11-day trip to China this month. Its aim is to help the Chinese begin to assess the extent of a
non-native marine grass invasion that threatens mangrove-dominated
coastal forests in that country's Fujian province.

A team of Oregon State University veterinary medicine students will journey to Nicaragua at the end of fall term to spend two weeks in remote villages providing veterinary care to large animals, conducting public outreach and education, and hosting free spay and neuter clinics.
The seven students are part of the International Veterinary Student Association chapter at OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Changing a baby’s diaper is one of the least inspiring activities imaginable. However, when Hong Liu changes her 1-year-old son, Joshua, she finds herself imagining a cleaner, brighter future, in which biological waste becomes a source of electricity for houses and hydrogen for cars. Rinsing out a diaper (and flushing gallons of water to a distant treatment plant) or tossing out a disposable (and shipping it to a landfill), Liu thinks about a different kind of waste, about the inefficient use of resources. "I think about all this wastefulness," she says. "It is my hope that we can make use of biological waste, collect energy from it, and not send it to some central place for disposal."
For Liu, extracting energy from wastewater is no pipe dream. She is developing a microbial fuel cell as a way of harnessing electricity from wastewater.

What do you get when you cross an egg white with a crabshell? You get a thin film that prevents food from spoiling and can be eaten along with the food that it wraps. No joke. It can even be fortified with vitamins and minerals so the food and the film together make a more nutritious fare.
This super packaging is the latest technology from OSU's Department of Food Science and Technology. The film combines two key ingredients: a fiber from shellfish (chitosan) and a protein from egg whites (lysozyme). Its discovery combines the ingenuity of two OSU researchers: Yanyun Zhao, a food technologist and specialist in value-added products, and Mark Daeschel, a microbiologist and specialist in food safety.