News
Public invited behind doors of HMSC April 13 for Marine Science Day
NEWPORT, Ore. – Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center will allow the public to explore “behind the scenes” of this unique facility on Saturday, April 13, when the Newport facility hosts its annual Marine Science Day.
The free event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., will feature scientists and educators from OSU, federal and state agencies, Oregon Coast Aquarium, and the new NOAA Marine Operations Center-Pacific. It is a chance for the public to explore one of the nation’s leading marine science and education centers.
An online schedule of events is available at: hmsc.oregonstate.edu/marinescienceday
In addition to a diversity of marine science presentations, two research themes will be highlighted. One is the science behind bycatch reduction devices, which will be featured by researchers from NOAA Fisheries, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, OSU, Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, and Foulweather Trawl, a Newport netmaker.
Marine Science Day visitors will see actual bycatch reduction devices and have an opportunity to view videos showing how fish are excluded or retained, depending on their size, swimming ability or other characteristic. Other research will highlight genetics or other tools used to distinguish between wanted and unwanted catch. Scientists will be on hand to answer questions and discuss their research.
“Visitors will learn not only about the problem of bycatch but also about the solutions, which range from simple and elegant to complex and cutting-edge,” said Maryann Bozza, program manager of the center. “All of the different HMSC research displays on bycatch reduction will be grouped together.”
A second theme will be wave energy, highlighting the efforts of the OSU Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center to improve and facilitate testing of wave energy devices and evaluate their potential effects on marine habitats. HMSC’s Sarah Henkel, a senior research assistant professor in the OSU Department of Zoology, will present an update of wave energy developments on the Oregon Coast.
Henkel’s talk begins at 3 p.m. in the Visitor Center auditorium.
Among other highlights of Marine Science Day:
- Visitor Center activities will include new wave energy exhibits, the recently dedicated Japanese tsunami dock exhibit and a new interactive wave tank.
- The center’s new octopus, named “Miss Oscar,” will be featured in a 1 p.m. interpretive talk and octopus feeding demonstration.
- The public can take self-guided tours through the facility’s marine research labs, library and classrooms, where scientists will have interactive exhibits explaining their research. Visitors may also take guided tours of HMSC’s seawater facilities and aquatic animal husbandry laboratory.
A number of educational activities for children and families will be available, presented by Oregon Sea Grant, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Oregon Coast Aquarium.
The OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center is located at 2030 S.E. Marine Science Drive in Newport, just south of the Highway 101 bridge over Yaquina Bay.
Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Maryann Bozza, 541-867-0234
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageNew system to restore wetlands could reduce massive floods, aid crops
OSU engineers designed a new system to create wetlands that could help farmers in the Midwest avoid catastrophic floods and retain water for when it's needed by crops.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have developed a new interactive planning tool to create networks of small wetlands in Midwest farmlands, which could help the region prevent massive spring floods and also retain water and mitigate droughts in a warming climate.
The planning approach, which is being developed and tested in a crop-dominated watershed near Indianapolis, is designed to identify the small areas best suited to wetland development, optimize their location and size, and restore a significant portion of the region’s historic water storage ability by using only a small fraction of its land.
Using this approach, the researchers found they could capture the runoff from 29 percent of a watershed using only 1.5 percent of the entire area.
The findings were published in Ecological Engineering, a professional journal, and a website is now available at http://wrestore.iupui.edu/ that allows users to apply the principles to their own land.
The need for new approaches to assist farmers and agencies to work together and use science-based methods is becoming critical, experts say. Massive floods and summer droughts have become more common and intense in the Midwest because of climate change and decades of land management that drains water rapidly into rivers via tile drains.
“The lands of the Midwest, which is one of the great food producing areas of the world, now bear little resemblance to their historic form, which included millions of acres of small lakes and wetlands that have now been drained,” said Meghna Babbar-Sebens, an assistant professor of civil and construction engineering at Oregon State. “Agriculture, deforestation, urbanization and residential development have all played a role.
“We have to find some way to retain and slowly release water, both to use it for crops and to prevent flooding,” Babbar-Sebens said. “There’s a place for dams and reservoirs but they won’t solve everything. With increases in runoff, what was once thought to be a 100-year flood event is now happening more often.
“Historically, wetlands in Indiana and other Midwestern states were great at intercepting large runoff events and slowing down the flows,” she said. “But Indiana has lost more than 85 percent of the wetlands it had prior to European settlement.”
An equally critical problem is what appears to be increasing frequency of summer drought, she said, which may offer a solid motivation for the region’s farmers to become involved. The problem is not just catastrophic downstream flooding in the spring, but also the loss of water and soil moisture in the summer that can be desperately needed in dry years.
The solution to both issues, scientists say, is to “re-naturalize” the hydrology of a large section of the United States. Working toward this goal was a research team from Oregon State University, Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, the Wetlands Institute in New Jersey, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They used engineering principles, historic analysis and computer simulations to optimize the effectiveness of any land use changes, so that minimal land use alteration would offer farmers and landowners a maximum of benefits.
In the Midwest, many farmers growing corn, soybeans and other crops have placed “tiles” under their fields to rapidly drain water into streams, which dries the soil and allows for earlier planting. Unfortunately, it also concentrates pollutants, increases flooding and leaves the land drier during the summer. Without adequate rain, complete crop losses can occur.
Experts have also identified alternate ways to help, including the use of winter cover crops and grass waterways that help retain and more slowly release water. And the new computer systems can identify the best places for all of these approaches to be used.
The work has been supported by the Indiana State Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.
College of Engineering Media Contact: David Stauth Source:Meghna Babbar-Sebens, 541-737-8536
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageScreenwriter Mike Rich visits OSU for screening of ‘Finding Forrester’ on April 4
Screenwriter Mike Rich will appear at Oregon State University on Thursday, April 4, for a special screening of his award-winning film, “Finding Forrester.” A question-and-answer session will follow.
The screening will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Construction & Engineering Hall of OSU’s LaSells Stewart Center. It is free and open to the public.
Rich, who attended OSU until 1982, created a buzz in Hollywood with his first screenplay “Finding Forrester.” It was picked up by Columbia Pictures and was a holiday season release in 2000, starring Sean Connery and directed by Gus Van Sant. Rich’s second screenplay “The Rookie,” starring Dennis Quaid and Rachel Griffiths, was a success for Disney in 2002.
His other notable screenplays also include ‘Radio,” “The Nativity Story” and “Secretariat.”
The Visiting Writers Series brings nationally-known writers to campus each year and is made possible by support from The Valley Library, the OSU School of Writing, Literature, and Film, the Office of the Provost, the College of Liberal Arts, Kathy Brisker and Tim Steele, and the OSU Beaver Store.
Media Contact: Angela Yeager Source:Heather Brown, 719-232-1485
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageOSU Press publishes its first book for children
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State University Press, which was founded more than 50 years ago, is publishing its first book aimed at children.
“Ellie’s Log: Exploring the Forest Where the Great Tree Fell” continues the press’ tradition of publications about Pacific Northwest forests and natural history. But this seven-chapter book is aimed at eight- to 12-year-olds.
It tells the story of two children exploring an old-growth forest in the Oregon Cascades – specifically the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a long-term ecological research (LTER) site of the National Science Foundation for more than 50 years.
“A common theme in many of the books we’ve published is the importance of getting people out into nature and learning about our region’s flora and fauna,” said Faye Chadwell, the Donald and Delpha Campbell University Librarian and director of the OSU Press. “By combining elements of science and storytelling, ‘Ellie’s Log’ will, we hope, capture the attention of younger readers and encourage them to observe the natural world in new ways.”
Written by Judith Li, an emeritus faculty member in OSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, the book focuses on the children’s discovery of the forest’s natural wonders and processes. The narrative, which ranges from the forest’s biodiversity to seasonal change – is based on Li’s experience as stream ecologist at H.J. Andrews.
She said she wrote Ellie’s Log to “inspire children to explore nature, to observe, and to begin thinking like scientists.” The book, vividly illustrated by illustrator and science communicator M.L. Herring, also of OSU, is part of the LTER’s national Schoolyard Book series.
A learning website, ellieslog.org, developed in collaboration with OSU Libraries, and an online teacher’s guide, complement the book. Both provide ways for children to investigate natural habitats where they live and share their results with “Ellie’s friends.”
Ellie’s Log can be ordered from the OSU Press at: http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/ElliesLog
Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Micki Reaman, 541-737-4620
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageOSU selects Linfield exec for vice president post
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Glenn Ford, who has been vice president and chief financial officer at Linfield College in Oregon since 2007, has been named vice president for Finance and Administration at Oregon State University.
Ford will begin his new duties on July 8. He succeeds long-time Oregon State vice president Mark McCambridge, who is retiring.
OSU President Ed Ray said that Ford’s experience, which includes stints at three Land Grant universities prior to his Linfield position, would help him “hit the ground running.”
“Mark McCambridge did an exemplary job of helping keep OSU on sound financial footing in a difficult economic environment and doing so in a most transparent manner,” Ray said. “Glenn Ford has the experience and vision to continue that success as the university moves forward.”
As vice president for finance and administration at Oregon State, Ford will serve as the university’s chief financial officer, advising Ray on financial matters and overseeing an organizational structure that includes budget and fiscal planning, business affairs, business services, conferences and special events, facilities services, human resources and public safety.
“I am thrilled to join Oregon State University – a world-class research university with a student-centered focus,” Ford said. “My philosophy aligns well with Oregon State’s core values of accountability, diversity, integrity, respect and social responsibility. I am very impressed by the university’s culture of collaborative decisiveness that enhances Oregon State’s distinctiveness and keeps OSU at the forefront of higher education in the United States.”
In addition to Oregon State’s large Corvallis campus, the university operates 15 Agricultural Experiment Station branches, Extension Service operations in 36 counties, the OSU-Cascades campus in Bend, the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, and the Food Innovation Center and a range of other programs and facilities in Portland.
Ford has had similar responsibilities at Linfield College in McMinnville, where he oversees planning and budgeting, investment management, human resources, public safety and security, environmental health and safety and a range of other services. Before joining Linfield, he was vice president for business and finance at Utah State University, a Land Grant university with multiple campuses as well as Extension and Experiment Station operations.
Ford also worked at Washington State University for 15 years in a variety of positions, including four years as finance and operations director (vice chancellor) at the WSU Vancouver campus. Ford also worked at the University of Idaho.
Ford recently was appointed to the board of the Oregon 529 College Savings Network, and is a board member of the West Coast College Consortium, Pioneer Educators Health Trust, and the Willamette Valley Medical Center. He is a graduate of the University of Idaho, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in forest products (business management option) and a master’s of business administration.
Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Steve Clark, 541-737-4875
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageHolocaust Memorial Week at OSU observed April 8-12
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University will observe Holocaust Memorial Week April 8-12 with a series of events, including a film screening about a notable Holocaust survivor who will also give a public talk, a lecture by an expert on the relationship between big business and Nazism, and a discussion about genocide in Cambodia.
This observance is the 27th in the annual series, which is a collaboration of OSU, the Corvallis/Benton County Public Library, the City of Corvallis, Beit Am, and School District 509-J.
For a complete schedule of events, go to http://oregonstate.edu/dept/holocaust
The program will also include the following events, all of which are free and open to the public:
- Monday, April 8, 7:30 p.m., C&E Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center – A public talk by Alexander Hinton, “Annihilating Difference: The Cambodian Genocide.” Hinton will discuss the Cambodian genocide which resulted in almost 2 million Cambodians dying between 1975 and 1979, and issues of why genocides happen. Hinton is director of the Rutgers Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights. He is author of the 2005 book, “Why did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide.”
- Tuesday, April 9, 4 p.m., Darkside Cinema, 215 S.W. 4th, Corvallis – A screening of the film, “Landscapes of Memory – The Life of Ruth Klüger” (in German, with subtitles). It is a biopic about noted Holocaust survivor and memoirist Ruth Klüger.
- Tuesday, April 9, 7:30 p.m., C&E Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center – A public talk by Ruth Klüger, “The Shoah in Fiction.” Klüger was born in Vienna in 1931 and her memoir, “Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered,” documents her internment at several camps, including Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. Klüger will discuss recent trends in depicting the Holocaust through fiction.
- Wednesday, April 10, 7:30 p.m., C&E Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center – A public talk by Peter Hayes, “From Aryanization to Auschwitz: German Corporate Complicity in the Holocaust.” Hayes, a professor of Holocaust studies at Northwestern University, is an expert on the interaction between German corporations and the Nazi state. In his talk, Hayes will address the involvement of German big business with the Holocaust and the advantages gained by corporations, including the opportunity to exploit slave labor.
- Thursday, April 11, 7:30 p.m., C&E Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center – A public talk by Henryk Grynberg, “Bearing Witness through Literature.” A Holocaust survivor who has been described as “the chronicler of the Polish Jews,” Grynberg is an award-winning author of major works of fiction and nonfiction dealing with the Holocaust in Poland. An early novel, “The Jewish War,” tells of his experiences during WW II and the sequel, “Victory,” follows his life after the war. It is listed among the “One Hundred Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature.”
- Friday, April 12, 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., OSU Memorial Union Journey Room – A student conference called “Social Justice in Policy and Education.” The objective of the conference is to address issues of social justice. It includes a visual presentation on aspects of Poland that recall the Holocaust, such as memorials of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish Museum in Warsaw, and the Majdanek death camp. OSU students who recently returned from Poland will narrate the presentation and lead discussion.
Corvallis Mayor Julie Manning will issue a proclamation at the April 8 event. Among the co-sponsors of these events are the OSU School of Language, Culture, and Society; the OSU School of Writing, Literature and Film; the OSU College of Business; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and the Austrian Consulate General, Los Angeles.
Media Contact: Angela Yeager Source:Paul Kopperman, 541-737-3421
Multimedia:
Henryk Grynberg will give a talk, “Bearing Witness through Literature,” on April 11, 2013 as part of OSU's Holocaust Memorial Week. (photo courtesy of Jacek Lagowski/Agencja Gazetta)
Ruth Klüger will also speak at Oregon State University on April 11 as part of Holocaust Memorial Week.
National security leader to deliver OSU commencement address in June
Brigadier Gen. Julie A. Bentz, who advises President Obama on national security issues, will return to her alma mater later this spring when she delivers the commencement address at Oregon State University on June 15.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Brigadier Gen. Julie A. Bentz, who advises President Obama on national security issues, will return to her alma mater this June when she delivers the commencement address at Oregon State University.
Bentz, director of strategic capabilities policy on the National Security Staff, is a 1986 graduate of OSU, where she received an ROTC commission and earned a degree in radiological health. She is the first female officer from the Oregon Army National Guard to achieve the rank of general.
“Gen. Bentz has played an integral role in advising the United States about security matters – and especially nuclear defense strategies and implications – since Sept. 11, 2001,” said OSU President Edward J. Ray. “Her journey from a small town in Oregon, to Oregon State University, and on to national prominence will provide a compelling message for our graduates.”
Bentz grew up in the tiny, unincorporated town of Jordan, Ore., which is near Stayton, and earned a national ROTC scholarship that would have allowed her to attend any of more than 200 universities in the country. She chose Oregon State, and earned her bachelor of science and bachelor of arts degrees in radiological health. She accepted her ROTC commission and was stationed in Landstuhl, Germany.
She later was stationed in San Antonio, Texas, where she worked as a nuclear, biological and chemical officer, training U.S. medical forces during the first Gulf War.
Then she became a missionary, and spent four years in Europe and Africa, while still working as an Army reserve officer.
“The pay I received from my service time was enough to pay for my missionary lifestyle,” she told the Oregon Stater magazine in a recent interview.
Bentz earned master’s (health physics) and doctoral (nuclear engineering) degrees from the University of Missouri, and another master’s degree in national security strategy from the National War College in Washington, D.C. She worked at the Pentagon during the 9-11 attacks, received a Legion of Merit medal for her work on the Homeland Security Council, and recently helped coordinate the U.S. response to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
OSU’s 144th commencement ceremony will take place on Saturday, June 15, in Reser Stadium.
Generic OSU Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Steve Clark, 541-737-4875
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Promote to the OSU home pageOSU tracks furniture for special needs students through new Wi-Fi tagging system
OSU’s Disability Access Services is using the AeroScout Real-Time Location System and Asset Tracking & Management solution to instantly track the location of items in order to reduce costs through improved inventory utilization while ensuring that the campus is accessible and comfortable for everyone.
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Oregon State University is using a new tracking system for specialized items for students, faculty and visitors with disabilities and special needs.
OSU’s Disability Access Services is using the AeroScout Real-Time Location System and Asset Tracking & Management solution to instantly track the location of items in order to reduce costs through improved inventory utilization while ensuring that the campus is accessible and comfortable for everyone.
OSU implemented the new system to track the location of hundreds of assets – primarily specialized furniture – tables, podiums and chairs – dispersed across the campus. The system, which works with OSU’s standard Wi-Fi network, allows the Disability Access Service team to immediately locate needed items across the 1,800-acre Corvallis campus, which includes 40 buildings and more than 450 classrooms, and reposition the items where they’re needed.
“We have a lot of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and we needed to find a cost-effective way to accommodate them with specialized furniture,” said Jennifer Gosset of Disability Access Services. “Before deploying the AeroScout solution, there were times when 75 percent of (our) assets were unaccounted for. This impacted the campus experience for many of our students and staff members and drove up costs.
“Now we know exactly where every item is,” she added. “As a result, we’re able to provide a much better experience for our students with disabilities and we’ve significantly improved asset utilization and staff productivity.”
The new system includes tags that are attached to the specialized furniture. The tags send location information of each item over OSU’s Wi-Fi network to MobileView, which has a graphical map of the campus that shows the location of each item.
Media Contact: Theresa Hogue Source:Jennifer Gossett, 541-737-4454
Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageNewport researchers seek to reduce bycatch in groundfish trawling
Researchers from two agencies at the Hatfield Marine Science Center have tested a new bycatch reduction system that lowered the rate of incidental halibut bycatch by 57 percent.
NEWPORT, Ore. – Researchers working with the groundfish fishing industry in the Pacific Northwest have tested a new “flexible sorting grid excluder” – a type of bycatch reduction device that shows promise to significantly reduce the incidental bycatch of Pacific halibut from commercial bottom trawl fishermen.
In a series of tests that included 30 tows off the Washington coast, commercial fishermen were able to reduce the number of halibut taken as bycatch by 57 percent, while retaining 84 percent of the targeted groundfishes, according to Mark Lomeli of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, an organization that helps resource agencies and the fishing industry sustainably manage Pacific Ocean resources.
The findings are being published in the journal Fisheries Research.
Incidental bycatch is a significant issue in many coastal regions including the Pacific Northwest. It occurs when fishing operations result in the discard of non-targeted fish and invertebrates, or through accidental interactions with mammals, seabirds and sea turtles. It is of particular concern, resource managers say, when these “bycaught” species are overfished, threatened or endangered.
The halibut project is the latest success in a series of bycatch reduction projects conducted through a collaboration between NOAA Fisheries and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. These projects have captured the interest of the fishing industry, according to Waldo Wakefield of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, a principal investigator on the project and co-author on the article.
“Fishermen are really engaged in the research because they are concerned about getting shut down if the weight of the halibut bycatch approaches a certain threshold,” said Wakefield, who works out of Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore. “The fishermen are not only engaged with the scientists, but they interact with each other and with the net-makers.
“In addition to the reality of being shut down, there is a perception issue,” added Wakefield, who is a courtesy professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “They don’t want to unnecessarily be killing halibut, salmon and other species.”
The flexible sorting grid excluder uses two vertical sorting panels that sort fish by size as they progress back toward the codend, noted Lomeli, who was lead author on the Fisheries Research article. The concept to the design is that fish smaller than the grid openings will pass through and be retained, where fish greater than the grid openings – such as the halibut – will be excluded from the net via an exit ramp.
“The system is not perfect,” Lomeli said. “Smaller halibut will occasionally slip through and fishermen in the tests lost about 16 percent of the groundfish they were targeting.”
Nevertheless, the reduction of the halibut bycatch is significant and may be improved by further research.
“The benefit of this type of gear is that fishermen can use smaller or bigger grids depending on the size of the fish,” noted Lomeli, who also works out of OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. “What works for one vessel may not work for another, and fishermen may want to adjust when they target different species. “
Bycatch has become a major issue, the researchers noted, especially since many of the fisheries have gone to a catch-share management system, which caps the number of fish individual fisherman can catch instead of the old system, which had a quota for the entire industry. As part of the new management system, observers are now aboard each fishing vessel to note the catch numbers and weight of both targeted fish and bycatch.
“If the fishermen start getting close to catching too many fish of the wrong species, they typically move, change gear or fish during a different time of the year,” said Wakefield, who is with the Fishery Resource Analysis and Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
Wakefield and Lomeli have been collaboratively conducting trawl selectivity studies in West Coast trawl fisheries. Their initial work began with the Pacific whiting industry at reducing Chinook salmon bycatch. In this work, a bycatch reduction device using an open escape window was developed that allowed strong-swimming Chinook to escape through the open window, while weak-swimming Pacific hake passed through to the codend.
They also worked with Bob Hannah and Stephen Jones of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in helping the Oregon pink shrimp industry reduce habitat impacts and bycatch of eulachon, a small threatened species in the smelt family, by modifying components of the trawl net. The research team is continuing its work with shrimpers, developing new proposals to further decrease the bycatch of eulachon as well as juvenile rockfish.
The collaborative effort to reduce bycatch by NOAA, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, ODFW, the fishing industry, net-makers and others is one reason Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center was established – and is considered one of the most unique marine research and education facilities in the world. The bycatch issue is of such significance it will be a focus of Marine Science Day on April 13 at the Hatfield Marine Science Center.
Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Waldo Wakefield, 541-867-0542
Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home page Boiler Plate - OLD: Hatfield Marine Science CenterMiami marine science leader named director of OSU’s Hatfield center
CORVALLIS, Ore. – One of the nation’s leading marine science education and research facilities is getting a new director.
Robert K. Cowen, a marine biologist and administrator from Miami, Fla., has been named director of Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. He succeeds George Boehlert, who recently retired.
Janet Webster will continue serving as interim director of the center until Cowen begins his duties in late July.
Cowen holds the Robert C. Maytag Chair of Ichthyology at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, where he has served on the faculty since 1998. He previously was on the faculty of State University of New York at Stony Brook and conducted research as a doctoral student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Calif.
“Bob Cowen has marine science education and research experience on both coasts and is well-suited to lead the Hatfield Marine Science Center into the future,” said Richard Spinrad, OSU’s vice president for research. “That future could include the development of a cohesive marine science-based curriculum as well as continuing to expand the center’s robust research and public outreach missions.”
Cowen’s studies range broadly, encompassing such issues as coastal fish ecology, fishery oceanography, larval transport and connectivity of marine organism populations. He has served on numerous national committees and panels, and is affiliated with the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), a multi-institutional research effort led by OSU. He also has served as associate dean for research at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
“I am very enthusiastic about joining the Hatfield Marine Science Center and OSU – not only for their great reputation, but also for the huge potential for bridging marine science education and science activities across the university,” Cowen said.
OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center is located on a 49-acre site in Newport, and has a combined annual budget of about $45 million and 300 employees. Its mission includes both research and education and what makes the facility unique, officials say, is that it houses scientists and educators from OSU and several federal and state agencies - a collaborative environment unmatched at most marine science facilities in the country.
Among those agencies are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Environmental Protection Agency.
The center also includes the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies – a joint research initiative between OSU and NOAA; the university’s Marine Mammal Institute; the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station, which is the first of its kind in the country; and the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, a national leader in the development of wave energy.
“I look forward to working with all partners at Hatfield to further its education, science and public outreach missions,” Cowen said.
Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Rick Spinrad, 541-737-0662
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home page Boiler Plate - OLD: Hatfield Marine Science CenterNew website details Linus Pauling’s breakthroughs in protein structure
The Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center has added to its series of documentary history websites on the life of Linus Pauling
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center has added to its series of documentary history websites on the life of Linus Pauling with its newest addition, “Linus Pauling and the Structure of Proteins: A Documentary History.”
The website (http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/coll/pauling/proteins/index.html) is filled with rarely-seen photographs and letters and behind-the-scenes tales of controversy and collaboration.
This is the sixth website in the Special Collections & Archives Research Center’s series focusing on specific aspects of Pauling’s remarkable life and career. The proteins site is organized around a narrative written by Pauling biographer Thomas Hager and incorporates more than 400 letters, manuscripts, published papers, photographs and audio-visual snippets in telling its story.
Pauling (1901-1994) remains the only individual to have been awarded two unshared Nobel prizes, and his research in molecular biology is now the stuff of legend. Prompted during the Great Depression by a lack funding, Pauling shifted gears from his successful investigations into the structure of minerals and crystal structures in favor of a new program of research on biological topics. His relationship with the Rockefeller Foundation, which funded most of this new line of inquiry, is a major theme of the proteins website.
So, too, is the long running competition between Pauling’s laboratory and an array of British proteins researchers that helped inspire Pauling’s alpha helix, a fundamental component of many protein structures. The alpha helix lay at the center of seven remarkable papers published by Pauling and his Caltech collaborators in the spring of 1951 that helped define the modern scientific understanding of protein structure and function. It was with these papers that Pauling came to be known as one of the founders of molecular biology.
The proteins story was not without its drama, and readers will learn of Pauling’s sometimes caustic confrontations with Dorothy Wrinch, whose cyclol theory of protein structure was a source of intense objection for Pauling and his colleague, Carl Niemann. The website also delves into the fruitful collaboration enjoyed between Pauling and his Caltech co-worker, Robert Corey and explores the controversy surrounding his interactions with another associate, Herman Branson.
Many more discoveries lie in waiting for those interested in the history of molecular biology: the invention of the ultracentrifuge by Theodor Svedberg; Pauling’s long dalliance with a theory of antibodies; his critical concept of biological specificity; and the contested notion of coiled-coils, an episode that pit Pauling against Francis Crick.
Linus Pauling and the Structure of Proteins constitutes a major addition to the Pauling-related resources available online. It will be of interest to students, educators and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds. For much more on Pauling and his legacy, see the Linus Pauling Online portal at http://pauling.library.oregonstate.edu
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Boiler Plate: Valley Library Media Contact: Theresa Hogue Media Contact:Source: Chris Petersen, 541-737-2810
Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageMobile LIDAR technology expanding rapidly
The rapidly expanding technology of mobile LIDAR could change the way we see, study and record the land forms around us, with multiple applications in science and industry.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Imagine driving down a road a few times and obtaining in an hour more data about the surrounding landscape than a crew of surveyors could obtain in months.
Such is the potential of mobile LIDAR, a powerful technology that’s only a few years old and promises to change the way we see, study and record the world around us. It will be applied in transportation, hydrology, forestry, virtual tourism and construction – and almost no one knows anything about it.
That may change with a new report on the uses and current technology of mobile LIDAR, which has just been completed and presented to the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. It will help more managers and experts understand, use and take advantage of this science.
The full exploitation of this remarkable technology, however, faces constraints. Too few experts are trained to use it, too few educational programs exist to teach it, mountains of data are produced that can swamp the computer capabilities of even large agencies, and lack of a consistent data management protocol clogs the sharing of information between systems.
“A lot of people and professionals still don’t even know what mobile LIDAR is or what it can do,” said Michael Olsen, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Oregon State University, and lead author of the new report. “And the technology is changing so fast it’s hard for anyone, even the experts, to keep up.
“When we get more people using mobile LIDAR and we work through some of the obstacles, it’s going to reduce costs, improve efficiency, change many professions and even help save lives,” Olsen said.
LIDAR, which stands for light detecting and ranging, has been used for 20 years, primarily in aerial mapping. Pulses of light up to one million times a second bounce back from whatever they hit, forming a highly detailed and precise map of the landscape. But mobile LIDAR used on the ground, with even more powerful computer systems, is still in its infancy and has only been commercially available for five years.
Mobile LIDAR, compared to its aerial counterpart, can provide 10 to 100 times more data points that hugely improve the resolution of an image. Moving even at highway speeds, a technician can obtain a remarkable, three-dimensional view of the nearby terrain.
Such technology could be used repeatedly in one area and give engineers a virtual picture of an unstable, slow-moving hillside. It could provide a detailed image of a forest, or an urban setting, or a near-perfect recording of surrounding geology. An image of a tangle of utility lines in a ditch, made just before they were backfilled and covered, would give construction workers 30 years later a 3-D map to guide them as they repaired a leaking pipe.
Mobile LIDAR may someday be a key to driverless automobiles, or used to create amazing visual images that will enhance “virtual tourism” and let anyone, anywhere, actually see what an area looks like as if they were standing there. The applications in surveying and for transportation engineering are compelling, and may change entire professions.
Just recently, mobile LIDAR was used to help the space shuttle Endeavour maneuver through city streets to reach its final home in Los Angeles.
Some of the newest applications, Olsen said, will have to wait until there are enough experts to exploit them. OSU operates one of the few programs in the nation to train students in both civil engineering and this evolving field of “geomatics,” and more jobs are available than there are people to fill them. Due to a partnership with Leica Geosystems and David Evans and Associates, OSU has sufficient hardware and software to maintain a variety of geomatics courses. But more educational programs are needed, Olsen said, and fully-trained and licensed professionals can make $100,000 or more annually.
Other nations, he said, including Canada, have made a much more aggressive commitment to using mobile LIDAR and training students in geomatics. It is critical for the U.S. to follow suit, Olsen said.
Collaborators on the new report included researchers from the University of Houston, Lidarnews.com, David Evans and Associates, Persi Consulting, and Innovative Data, Inc.
Boiler Plate: About the OSU College of Engineering: The OSU College of Engineering is among the nation’s largest and most productive engineering programs. In the past six years, the College has more than doubled its research expenditures to $27.5 million by emphasizing highly collaborative research that solves global problems, spins out new companies, and produces opportunity for students through hands-on learning. Media Contact: David Stauth Source:Michael Olsen, 541-737-9327
Multimedia:Video of space shuttle move:
Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageFormer CDC director Julie Gerberding to speak at OSU on April 3
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Julie Gerberding, the first woman to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will speak at Oregon State University on Wednesday, April 3, on “Becoming the Healthiest Nation.”
Her free public lecture, which is part of OSU’s Discovery Lecture Series, begins at 7 p.m. in LaSells Stewart Center.
In her talk, Gerberding will outline how the United States, while spending more on health care than any other nation, is far from being the healthiest country in the world. She advocates for private-public partnerships to improve health care and lower costs.
In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for her leadership of CDC during the growing threats of bioterrorism and SARS. Forbes magazine listed her among the 100 most powerful women in the world for four consecutive years.
Gerberding is now president of the vaccine division of pharmaceutical company, MERCK. During her tenure as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from July of 2002 to January of 2009, CDC expanded its efforts in disaster preparedness, response to bioterrorism, preventing pandemics and addressing SARS and other emerging global health threats.
Her earlier career focused on preventing occupational HIV transmission. Gerberding has a medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and is on the faculty of the University of California at San Francisco.
More information is available at: http://oregonstate.edu/urm/events/discovery
Boiler Plate: Generic OSU Boiler Plate Media Contact: Mark Floyd Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageNew study questions the role of kinship in mass strandings of pilot whales
A new study published in the Journal of Heredity has found that pilot whales do not beach themselves because of family ties - a hypothesis that has grown in popularity in recent years.
NEWPORT, Ore. – Pilot whales that have died in mass strandings in New Zealand and Australia included many unrelated individuals at each event, a new study concludes, challenging a popular assumption that whales follow each other onto the beach and to almost certain death because of familial ties.
Using genetic samples from individuals in large strandings, scientists have determined that both related and unrelated individuals were scattered along the beaches – and that the bodies of mothers and young calves were often separated by large distances.
Results of the study are being published this week in the Journal of Heredity.
Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, said genetic identification showed that, in many cases, the mothers of calves were missing entirely from groups of whales that died in the stranding. This separation of mothers and calves suggests that strong kinship bonds are being disrupted prior to the actual stranding – potentially playing a role in causing the event.
“Observations of unusual social behavior by groups of whales prior to stranding support this explanation,” said Baker, who frequently advises the International Whaling Commission and is co-author of the Journal of Heredity article. The OSU cetacean expert is a professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at the university’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore.
The mass stranding of pilot whales is common in New Zealand and Australia, involving several thousand deaths over the last few decades, according to Marc Oremus of the University of Auckland, who is lead author on the study. The researchers say their genetic analysis of 490 individual pilot whales from 12 different stranding events showed multiple maternal lineages among the victims in each stranding, and thus no correlation between kinship and the grouping of whales on the beach.
This challenges another popular hypothesis – that “care-giving behavior” directed at close maternal relatives may be responsible for the stranding of otherwise healthy whales, Oremus said.
“If kinship-based behavior was playing a causal role in strandings, we would expect that whales in a stranding event would be related to one another through descent from a common maternal ancestor, such as a grandmother or great-grandmother – and that close kin would be clustered on the beach,” Oremus said. “Neither of these was the case.”
Because of the separation of mothers and calves, or in some cases, the outright absence of mothers among the victims, the study has important implications for agencies and volunteers who work to save the stranded whales, Baker said.
“Rescue efforts aimed at ‘refloating’ stranded whales often focus on placing stranded calves with the nearest mature females, on the assumption that the closest adult female is the mother,” Baker pointed out. “Our results suggest that rescuers should be cautious when making difficult welfare decisions – such as the choice to rescue or euthanize a calf – based on this assumption alone.”
Long-finned pilot whales are the most common species to strand en masse worldwide, the researchers noted, and most of their beaching events are thought to be unrelated to human activity – unlike strandings of some other species. Both naval sonar and the noise of seismic exploration have been linked to the stranding of other species.
The phenomenon is not new. In fact, mass strandings of whales or dolphins were described by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago and were thought to have some kind of natural cause, Baker said, although it is unclear what that may be.
“It is usually assumed that environmental factors, such as weather or the pursuit of prey, brings pilot whales into shallow water where they become disoriented,” Baker said. “Our results suggest that some form of social disruption also contributes to the tendency to strand.”
“It could be mating interaction or competition with other pods of whales,” Baker said. “We just don’t know. But it is certainly something that warrants further investigation.”
The researchers hope their study will lead to better genetic sampling of more pilot whales and other stranded whale species, as well as the use of satellite tags to monitor the survival and behavior of whales that are helped back into the ocean.
“The causal mechanisms of these strandings remain an enigma,” Oremus said, “so the more avenues of research we can pursue before and after the whales beach themselves, the more likely we are to discover why it happens.”
The study was funded by the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Australian Marine Mammal Centre, with support from the New Zealand Department of Conservation and the Australian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment. Baker’s work is supported by a Pew Marine Conservation Fellowship for the study of dolphins around islands of the South Pacific.
Boiler Plate: Hatfield Marine Science Center Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Scott Baker, 541-272-0560
Marc Oremus, New Caledonia +649-83-74-81
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Promote to the OSU home pageOSU Alumni Association to honor three at April gala on campus
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State University Alumni Association will present three of its highest honors this April 26 during its spring awards celebration.
The E.B. Lemon Distinguished Alumni Award will go to Hal Schudel of Corvallis, from the class of 1953. Schudel is a former faculty member and founder of what many consider to be the largest Christmas tree operation in the world. He is a pioneer in that industry, which is crucial to Oregon's economic health, and a supporter of OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
The Lemon award is the association's most prestigious honor, given to OSU alumni who make significant contributions to society and whose accomplishments and careers bring acclaim to the university.
The Jean and C.H. “Scram” Graham Leadership Award will go to Bill Perry of Canby, a 1989 graduate. Perry is past president of the association’s board of directors and a supporter of the association and the university. He is vice president of government relations for the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association.
The Graham award honors individuals who promote the alumni association and have demonstrated extraordinary volunteer service to the university.
The Honorary Alumni Award will go to Mark McCambridge of Corvallis, OSU's vice president for Finance and Administration since 2001. The award is the highest honor the association can bestow upon those who are not alumni of OSU. A member of the university's financial team since 1994, McCambridge has played a key role in reorganizing the university to make the best possible use of its resources, and he has championed the cause of fiscal transparency.
The recipients will be honored at an April 26 event; reservations are required for the gala, which will follow the theme of "In Honored Footsteps." It begins with a social hour at 6 p.m. at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center.
For more information, visit osualum.com/springawards, send an email to osualum@oregonstate.edu, or call 877-OSTATER (877-678-2837).
Boiler Plate: Alumni Association Media Contact: Kevin Miller Source:Julie Schwartz, 541-737-7916
Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageOSU turns winemaking waste into food supplements and flowerpots
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered how to turn the pulp from crushed wine grapes into a natural food preservative, biodegradable packaging materials and a nutritional enhancement for baked goods.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered how to turn the pulp from crushed wine grapes into a natural food preservative, biodegradable packaging materials and a nutritional enhancement for baked goods.
The United States wine industry creates a tremendous amount of waste from processing more than 4 million tons of grapes each year, mostly in the Pacific Northwest and California, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Wineries typically pay for the pulp to be hauled away, but a small percentage is used in low-value products such as fertilizer and cow feed.
"We now know pomace can be a sustainable source of material for a wide range of goods," said researcher Yanyun Zhao, a professor and value-added food products specialist with the OSU Extension Service. "We foresee wineries selling their pomace rather than paying others to dispose of it. One industry's trash can become another industry's treasure."
The pulp, which consists of stems, skins and seeds, is known as pomace and is packed with dietary fiber and phenolics, which have antioxidant effects. OSU researchers have dried and ground it to create edible and non-edible products.
For example, they extracted dietary fiber from pomace and turned it into powders that can be added to foods. Because the phenolics in pomace also control microbial growth and keep fats from deteriorating, OSU researchers also added the powdery fiber to yogurts and salad dressings to extend their shelf life by up to a week without changing taste and texture.
The researchers also used pomace to make colorful, edible coatings and films that can be stretched over fruits, vegetables and other food products. They contain antioxidants, seal in moisture and control the growth of some bacteria.
Additionally, the scientists added pomace powders, which are gluten-free, to muffins and brownies. They replaced up to 15 percent of the flour in the recipes with it and thus increased the fiber and antioxidants in the baked goods. The research continues as scientists are also adding pomace to yeast breads.
"Adding fiber-rich ingredients can change a dough's absorption qualities and stiffness," said OSU cereal chemist Andrew Ross. "We're trying to find the right balance of pomace in dough while measuring the bread for its density, volume, color and taste. Commercial bakeries need this information before using pomace flour for large-scale production."
OSU has also made pomace into biodegradable boards, which can further be molded into containers, serving trays and flowerpots. After burial in soil for 30 days, the products degraded by 50 percent to 80 percent.
Researchers found that the methods for making products from pomace vary depending on if the pulp is from red or white grapes. That's because winemaking processes differ for each varietal and they produce pulp with different levels of sugar, nitrogen, phenolics and other compounds. In their experiments, researchers used pomace from grapes that included Pinot Noir, Merlot, Morio Muscat and Müller Thurgau.
Now, OSU is seeking to establish partnerships with companies interested in marketing the products it developed.
The research has been published in various journals, including the Journal of Applied Polymer Science, Food Chemistry, and the Journal of Food Science.
Boiler Plate: Generic OSU Boiler Plate Media Contact: Daniel Robison Source:Yanyun Zhao, 541-737-9151
Andrew Ross, 541-737-9149
Multimedia:
Yanyun Zhao, a food scientist at Oregon State University, holds a muffin made with grape pomace. (Photo by Lynn Ketchum.)
Oregon State University made this biodegradable fiberboard from grape pomace, which consists of the skins, stems and seeds left over from winemaking. (Photo by Lynn Ketchum.)
Series of Austrian films will show in Corvallis starting April 9
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A series of films from Austria, including the recent Oscar winner “Amour,” will be shown in Corvallis starting the week of April 9.
Organized by the German program of Oregon State University’s School of Language, Culture, and Society, this series of four recent Austrian films is free and open to the public.
All films are subtitled and will play at the Darkside Cinema, 215 S.W. 4th St., Corvallis. The schedule is:
Tuesday, April 9, 4 p.m.: “Landscapes of Memory – The Life of Ruth Kluger,” a biopic about high-profile author Ruth Klüger, a famous scholar of German literature. Her autobiography, “Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered,” is an international bestseller. The director Renata Schmidtkunz and Holocaust survivor Klüger will be present for the screening.
Tuesday, April 23, 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.: “Breathing,” tells the story of a 19-year-old man who finds a new lease on life when he takes a job at a funeral home.
Tuesday, May 14, 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.: “Kuma,” a drama about the intertwining lives of two women, Fatma, a housewife with six children, and Ayse, a 19-year-old who is about to become the second wife of Fatma’s husband.
Tuesday, June 4, 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.: “Amour,” the Oscar-winning drama portrays the lives of a retired Parisian couple whose love is tested when the wife becomes severely ill.
The series is sponsored by the Austrian Consulate General in Los Angeles.
Boiler Plate: College of Liberal Arts Media Contact: Angela Yeager Source:Sebastian Heiduschke, 541-737-3957
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageNew “moon” app a hit
A new app created by Chris Vanderschuere, an OSU student, to describe current facts about the moon has been downloaded by more than a million people around the world.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Chris Vanderschuere was just doing a little programming task to help a Beaverton, Ore., school teach facts about the moon. But his Moon application became much more than that.
Vanderschuere, a student at Oregon State University, got about a million more downloads than he expected, from 150 countries.
The app can run on any iOS device like an iPad or iPhone, but was designed primarily for devices with location ability, such as cellular triangulation or GPS. It calculates information to answer many questions. What did the moon look like on July 4, 1776? Where in the sky will the moon be tomorrow? How far is the moon from Earth right now?
It uses the current time and location, or those that the user enters, and displays details of the moon such as the phase, location in the sky and moonrise and moonset times. A lunar surface image from NASA creates a three-dimensional center graphic that changes second-by-second as the shadow travels across the moon. A smaller picture of a moon spins around a compass to show where the moon is located in the sky, and another displays the angle above the horizon.
Vanderschuere said his mother suggested the app, for use in the K-8 school where she works. But a Portland, Ore., kayaking company is now using it to schedule their full-moon kayaking trips. And a photographer on safari in Africa used the app to get the perfect moon picture.
The project, Vanderschuere said, has also been a great learning experience – about programming, entrepreneurial skills, and more about the moon than he ever thought he’d know.
“What people see are some pretty graphics of the moon phases, but in order to do that I had to learn a lot of engineering principles behind the scenes,” Vanderschuere said.
Boiler Plate: About the OSU College of Engineering: The OSU College of Engineering is among the nation’s largest and most productive engineering programs. In the past six years, the College has more than doubled its research expenditures to $27.5 million by emphasizing highly collaborative research that solves global problems, spins out new companies, and produces opportunity for students through hands-on learning. Media Contact:Rachel Robertson, 541-737-7098
Source: Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Not Promote to the OSU home pageReconstruction of temperature history shows significance of recent warming
By the year 2100, Earth will be warmer under all greenhouse gas emission scenarios that at any time in the last 11,300 years, according to a newly published study in Science.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Using data from 73 sites around the world, scientists have been able to reconstruct Earth’s temperature history back to the end of the last Ice Age, revealing that the planet today is warmer than it has been during 70 to 80 percent of the time over the last 11,300 years.
Of even more concern are projections of global temperature for the year 2100, when virtually every climate model evaluated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that temperatures will exceed the warmest temperatures during that 11,300-year period known as the Holocene – under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
Results of the study, by researchers at Oregon State University and Harvard University, were published this week in the journal Science. It was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Paleoclimate Program.
Lead author Shaun Marcott, a post-doctoral researcher in Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, noted that previous research on past global temperature change has largely focused on the last 2,000 years. Extending the reconstruction of global temperatures back to the end of the last Ice Age puts today’s climate into a larger context.
“We already knew that on a global scale, Earth is warmer today than it was over much of the past 2,000 years,” Marcott said. “Now we know that it is warmer than most of the past 11,300 years. This is of particular interest because the Holocene spans the entire period of human civilization.”
Peter Clark, an OSU paleoclimatologist and co-author on the Science article, said many previous temperature reconstructions were regional in nature and were not placed in a global context. Marcott led the effort to combine data from 73 sites around the world, providing a much broader perspective.
“When you just look at one part of the world, the temperature history can be affected by regional climate processes like El Niño or monsoon variations,” noted Clark. “But when you combine the data from sites all around the world, you can average out those regional anomalies and get a clear sense of the Earth’s global temperature history.”
What that history shows, the researchers say, is that over the past 5,000 years, the Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees (Fahrenheit) – until the past 100 years, when it warmed ̴ 1.3 degrees (F). The largest changes were in the northern hemisphere, where there are more land masses and greater human populations.
Climate models project that global temperature will rise another 2.0 to 11.5 degrees (F) by the end of this century, largely dependent on the magnitude of carbon emissions. “What is most troubling,” Clark said, “is that this warming will be significantly greater than at any time during the past 11,300 years.”
Marcott said that one of the natural factors affecting global temperatures over the past 11,300 years is gradual change in the distribution of solar insolation associated with Earth’s position relative to the sun.
“During the warmest period of the Holocene, the Earth was positioned such that Northern Hemisphere summers warmed more,” Marcott said. “As the Earth’s orientation changed, Northern Hemisphere summers became cooler, and we should now be near the bottom of this long-term cooling trend – but obviously, we are not.”
Clark said that other studies, including those outlined in past IPCC reports, have attributed the warming of the planet over the past 50 years to anthropogenic, or human-caused activities – and not solar variability or other natural causes.
“The last century stands out as the anomaly in this record of global temperature since the end of the last ice age,” said Candace Major, program director in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences, which co-funded the research with NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. “This research shows that we’ve experienced almost the same range of temperature change since the beginning of the industrial revolution as over the previous 11,000 years of Earth history – but this change happened a lot more quickly.”
The research team, which included Jeremy Shakun of Harvard University and Alan Mix of Oregon State, primarily used fossils from ocean sediment cores and terrestrial archives to reconstruct the temperature history. The chemical and physical characteristics of the fossils – including the species as well as their chemical composition and isotopic ratios – provide reliable proxy records for past temperatures by calibrating them to modern temperature records.
Using data from 73 sites around the world allows a global picture of the Earth’s history and provides new context for climate change analysis.
“The Earth’s climate is complex and responds to multiple forcings, including CO2 and solar insolation,” Marcott said. “Both of those changed very slowly over the past 11,000 years. But in the last 100 years, the increase in CO2 through increased emissions from human activities has been significant. It is the only variable that can best explain the rapid increase in global temperatures.”
Marcott received his Ph.D. in geology in 2011 from OSU.
Boiler Plate: College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences Media Contact: Mark Floyd Source:Shaun Marcott, 541-737-1209
Peter Clark, 541-737-1247
Multimedia: Promote to OSU home page: Promote to the OSU home pageOSU makes oysters safer to eat with improved purification method
Oregon State University researchers have improved an old method of making oysters safer to eat so that more bacteria are removed without sacrificing taste and texture.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University has improved an old method of making oysters safer to eat so that more bacteria are removed without sacrificing taste and texture.
The improved process nearly clears their digestive tracts of the bacteria Vibrio parahaemolyticus, which can cause gastroenteritis, an infection marked by severe abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Each year in the United States, more than 40,000 cases of Vibrio parahaemolyticus infection are linked to the consumption of seafood, particularly raw oysters, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"This bacteria is a huge safety concern," said Yi-Cheng Su, an OSU professor of seafood microbiology and safety. “Cooking oysters easily kills it, but many consumers want to eat raw shellfish without worrying about foodborne illness. Oysters are also worth more to the seafood industry when alive.”
To make oysters safer, processors freeze, heat up or pressurize the mollusks. They also place them in tanks of clean seawater at room temperature. In the latter case, which is known as depuration, the shellfish filter clean water through their system and excrete most bacteria from their digestive tracts into the water. The dirty water is then filtered and sterilized with UV light.
But depuration at ambient temperature is not fully effective, researchers say. More than 10 percent of the Vibrio bacteria still remain after two days of depuration.
Pressurization, freezing and heat treatment kill all the Vibrio bacteria but they also kill the shellfish. Additionally, freezing and heat treatment negatively affect their taste, texture, shelf life and value.
Seeking a better alternative, Su and his colleagues tweaked the depuration method. They chilled the water to between 45 and 55 degrees and sterilized it with ultraviolet light. Their method eliminated 99.9 percent of the bacteria after four to five days. The oysters stayed alive during the purification, and their texture and taste were not altered. The new depuration process is also more cost-effective, Su said.
"Temperature-controlled depuration uses less electricity than other methods that rely on freezers, heat, pressurization and even radiation," he said. "Depuration systems are also relatively cheap to build – just a few shellfish holding tanks each equipped with a water pump, a UV sterilizer and a temperature control device."
The oysters still need to be placed in cold storage after the depuration process because warm environments allow any remaining bacteria to multiply quickly, nullifying the depuration process.
OSU researchers are also exploring ways to speed up the low-temperature depuration process by adding antimicrobial agents to the seawater in the tanks.
Oregon producers sold $3 million of farmed oysters in 2011, according to a report by the OSU Extension Service.
Boiler Plate: Generic OSU Boiler Plate Media Contact: Daniel Robison Source:Yi-Cheng Su, 503-325-4531
Multimedia:
Researcher Yi-Cheng Su pulls an oyster from a depuration tank at Oregon State University's Seafood Laboratory in Astoria. As the oysters filter the water, they excrete harmful bacteria from their digestive tracts and become safe to eat. (Photo by Lynn Ketchum.)
