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Oregon Natural Heritage Information Center
"The Unforgiving Coast: Maritime Disasters of the Pacific Northwest"
Berries: Fountains of Youth
Quakes at Seafloor
New Waves
Green Art
Measuring a Mountain
Kows for Kids
Bioterrorism: Fighting Back
Earthquake Testing
Dietary supplements: Hope for rejuvenation for humans

Oregon Natural Heritage Information Center

The best source of information on the distribution of wildlife and vegetation in the state . . . article and website

Berries: Fountains of Youth

An OSU researcher studies how berries fight "free radicals" that age body cells . . .
Featured in Newsweek and more . . .

Earthquake Effects at Seafloor

Discoveries by the Hatfield Marine Science Center's Robert Dziak are featured in Science Magazine

New Waves

Terry Dibble, an engineer with OSU's Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, surfs in its wave tank, for a National Geographic television special. more

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Green Art

"Pre-set Bridge2" copyright Julie Green

June, 2002 With an OSU General Research Fund grant, Julie Green, Assistant Professor of Art, soon will begin a video projection piece in China on the landscape and Chinese painting, and she will lecture there at universities and academies. Also, she has been invited to produce an installation of 145 painted plates for COPIA, a new Museum of Art, Wine and Food, in Napa, California. "The Last Supper" will illustrate final meal requests of inmates on death row. "It is my hope the piece will generate debate on the death penalty," says Green. Her paintings recently have been in shows in U.C. Santa Cruz, the University of Liverpool Art Museum, Art Space HAP in Hiroshima, Japan, and OSU's Fairbanks Gallery.

for more:
www.ucsc.edu/currents/01-02/02-04/exhibit.html

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Measuring a Mountain

With an enormous volcanic mass under the sea, Mauna Loa is the world's largest mountain. OSU geologists have made precise measurements . . . more

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Kows for Kids

"Corvallis Ruminant" by Yuji Hiratsuka, Associate Professor of Printmaking in the OSU Art Department, is included in Kows for Kids, a benefit project for services for children. The piece is located in Portland at SW Broadway and Washington, at the Union Bank of California Building, until July 2002. more

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Bioterrorism: Fighting Back

How scientists are working to combat a potential smallpox terrorist threat here at home

Smallpox virus and/or genetically-engineered orthopoxviruses are considered one of the most significant threats for malevolent use as potential agents of bioterrorism.

Because smallpox was eliminated from the U.S. population in the 1960's, prophylactic immunization was discontinued. The subsequent 40 years have produced a population that is immunologically naive and highly susceptible to orthopoxvirus infection.

Due to the small but significant risk of serious complications from vaccination, mass immunization of the populace is contra-indicated. Therefore, the focus of the experiments outlined in this proposal is to develop an effective anti-poxvirus drug for use in treating or preventing human disease caused by pathogenic poxviruses. The target of our antiviral drug development efforts will be the poxvirus proteinase responsible for core protein maturation, a step which is absolutely essential for the production and spread of infectious virions.

This project will be carried out as a partnership between an academic group at Oregon State University with a long history of research in various aspects of poxvirus proteolysis, and a biopharmaceutical company, SIGA Research Laboratories, which is actively engaged in the development of proteinase inhibitors as anti-infectives.

Together, these groups will identify the viral gene product responsible for catalyzing core protein maturation and use genetic approaches to validate it as an antiviral target. Expression vector technology will be used to express and purify the large quantities of the core protein proteinase. The purified proteinase will serve as the starting material for a two-pronged approach to the identification of potential inhibitors:

1) Structure-function analysis coupled with rational drug design; and
2) Development of an in vitro cleavage assay appropriate for use in high-throughput screening against limited libraries of potential proteinase inhibitors.

Lead compounds identified by either approach will be tested for the ability to inhibit the replication of various orthopoxviruses in tissue culture cells. If necessary, lead compounds will be subjected to iterative chemistry to improve bioavailability, specificity and potency. The most promising optimized lead compound(s) will then be selected and advanced into preclinical and toxicology studies in preparation for in vivo testing in a murine and/or primate challenge in collaboration with NIAID and USAMRIID investigators.

It is anticipated that the results of these experiments will identify one or more antiviral drugs as development candidates to provide a rapid-response defense against the deliberate introduction of a pathogenic poxvirus into the environment. This is an event which we all hope never transpires, but for which preparation is vital.

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Testing floor helps with earthquake research

A new strong floor is under construction at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory that will allow researchers to simulate earthquakes and forces up to one million pounds. more

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