Paul Farber talks about Charles Darwin’s personal quest to understand life’s most fundamental principles. A rare specimen in the soup Marry? Or not marry? The Malthus analogy
Archive » April, 2007
April 25, 2007
On Red Owl Mountain
By Cristina Eisenberg In the rural West, geography defines us. I live with my husband and teenage daughters on the shoulder of Red Owl Mountain, one of the many mountains that make up the Swan Range, which is part of the crazy quilt of ranges that forms the Rocky Mountains in northwest Montana. Our cabin [...]
April 1, 2007
Seed Biology Program Gives Undergrads a Boost
Learning the secrets of seed germination is helping an OSU student grow her own career as a physician. Jing Sun, a junior in microbiology from Corvallis, Oregon, has wanted to become a doctor ever since a childhood bout with hepatitis A put her in the hospital. “That made a big impression on me, mostly on [...]
April 1, 2007
Fishing for Life
Every spring, the Umatilla people of northeastern Oregon join other Columbia River tribes in celebrating the return of the salmon. Growing up on the reservation in the foothills of the Blue Mountains east of Pendleton, Patrick Luke learned to appreciate the bond between fish and people. When he wasn’t helping to tend the family’s horses, [...]
April 1, 2007
Young Immigrants
Growing up in a strange land
Coming of age in a new land is an American story. Children who bridge two cultures — their parents’ homeland and their adopted country — struggle to find a transnational identity and to succeed. In a child’s mind, memories of friends, familiar play places and sounds compete with a strange world and unintelligible language. In [...]
April 1, 2007
Edith Molina: In Her Own Words
Growing up in a strange land
As an OSU student, Edith Quiroz Molina (Class of 2002) participated in the research that led to the “One and a Half Generation Mexican Youth in Oregon” report. Now living in Troutdale, Oregon, she is the chief executive officer of BilingualHire, a Chicano consulting business in Portland, with two other OSU alumni. She also works [...]
April 1, 2007
Teaching Evolution
Central to science
Most textbooks treat evolution as “just another topic” rather than as the overarching theory that ties life systems together, says OSU Distinguished Professor Paul Farber. “Evolution, which synthesizes the disparate disciplines of the life sciences, rarely emerges in biology courses or texts as the unifying thread that makes sense of all the material,” Farber wrote [...]
April 1, 2007
Mental Health Lifeline
The most important visitors to Stacy Ramirez’s office walk around her desk and sit in a chair next to her. As they talk, Ramirez catches subtle cues about her visitors’ emotions, whether or not they are taking their pills or maybe hearing voices again. “I can tell by their eyes if there’s something going on [...]
April 1, 2007
Grinding Out Lessons From the Earth
When Jeremiah Oxford, a master’s student from Coos Bay, Oregon, isn’t in class or writing a paper, he puts his mind to that most unacademic of tasks: grinding rocks. Tedious as it might sound, his work in Robert Duncan’s lab in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences isn’t a punishment. Instead, he is preparing [...]
April 1, 2007
A Student’s View
To become a research scientist and a teacher — that’s Sam VanLaningham’s goal. The OSU Ph.D. student from Ellensburg, Washington, received his master’s degree working with Andrew Meigs in the Department of Geosciences. For his Ph.D., VanLaningham walked next door to study with Bob Duncan and Nick Pisias in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric [...]
April 1, 2007
Lessons From the Zumwalt Prairie
Grazing for nature
When Marcy Cottrell Houle headed to the Zumwalt Prairie in the 1980s with her topo maps, tree-climbing gear and raptor leg bands to study hawks, she assumed wildlife and cows were incompatible. After all, that was the prevailing view — and there were millions of overgrazed acres across the West to prove it. So when [...]
April 1, 2007
Minding the Dairy
Scientists reveal a killer’s M.O.
Little matters more to dairy farmers than the purity of their product and the health of their animals. So when Warren “Buzz” Gibson, co-owner and herd manager at the Lochmead Dairy in Junction City, Oregon, heard six years ago that an incurable cattle disease called Johne’s (pronounced “yo-knees”) could threaten his reputation for quality, he [...]
April 1, 2007
Stories That Heal
Once upon a time in an Oregon river valley, there lived a woman named Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson. At the big university where she was a teacher and researcher, her students called her Dr. Dale. When visitors walked into Dr. Dale’s office at the College of Education, they noticed something very important about her: She loved working [...]
April 1, 2007
Bibliotherapy in Kenya
It was at the bedside of a dying relative that the idea for Daphne Kagume’s doctoral dissertation took hold. As her beloved uncle succumbed to AIDS in a Kenya hospital, the OSU graduate student witnessed the heartbreaking isolation that so often afflicts AIDS patients in her native country. She resolved to help. With guidance from [...]
April 1, 2007
Forged in Fire
Scientists want to know how fire shapes the region’s forests
In the life of a forest, fire can be a frequent and demanding companion. How often the flames visit and whether they stay low, licking the tree trunks, or flare into the canopy, becoming what foresters call a “stand replacement fire,” can determine the character of the forest for centuries. Or until the next fire. [...]
April 1, 2007
Nature’s Glue
Kaichang Li teaches soybeans to act like shellfish.
Soy may help prevent cancer not only on your kitchen table but also in your kitchen table. Across campus from OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute, where nutrition scientists have been studying soybeans’ place in a healthful diet (see “The Zinc Link,” page 22), another OSU scientist has found a way to use those same protein-rich beans [...]
April 1, 2007
Growing Technology
From microbes to plants, OSU researchers are leveraging biological materials to develop a variety of new products. Here are some highlights: Cellulose Power Professor Michael Penner in the Department of Food Science and Technology is studying one of the holy grails of the bio-based fuel industry: the economical conversion of woody plant materials into ethanol [...]
April 1, 2007
High Alert
Large carnivores promote healthy ecosystems by keeping browsers on edge
In a remote corner of Zion National Park, a small herd of mule deer browse quietly. Through the sun-dappled canyon burbles North Creek, its waters cool and clear, its banks green and reedy, alive with frogs, butterflies and bird-song. But this pastoral scene in southern Utah has a dark subtext, subtle yet unmistakable in the [...]
