The typical middle-aged woman takes care of everybody in her household except one — herself. The consequences of this benevolent self-neglect can be dire: chronic disease, even death. Even the healthiest lifestyle can’t always prevent disease. Still, millions of wives, mothers and grandmothers could better fend off, or at least slow down, the ravages of [...]
Archive » July, 2007
July 23, 2007
Cyberforest Unplugged
OSU undergrad team designs wireless sensor system
The science of mountain airsheds requires a strong back as well as a sharp mind — especially when you’re lugging a 65-pound golf-cart battery in your pack. An interdisciplinary team of OSU students spent 10 weeks this summer scaling the steep slopes of H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest to enable researchers to unplug their high-tech gear [...]
July 23, 2007
Found in Translation
Words and language have always fascinated Michael Goodman. Growing up in Florence, Oregon, he liked tracing the roots of words that most of us take for granted, and at Oregon State University, he has minored in Japanese. But it is his affinity for computers that is propelling the senior in the School of Electrical Engineering [...]
July 23, 2007
Dreaming of Hurricanes
When Kim Johnson was 8 years old, she would race through her school work so she could watch the Weather Channel. Her favorite show was “Weather in the Classroom,” and Johnson was in love with the subject. Seeing weather in action gave her a thrill. Now, the OSU senior and Honors College student from Beaverton, [...]
July 23, 2007
Great Blue Engine
Dawn Wright is pioneering powerful new tools to study Earth’s troubled oceans
The ocean shimmers to the curved rim of the Earth. Pressing her face against the jetliner window, Dawn Wright scans the azure expanse for a glimpse of her destination, a tiny volcanic archipelago that is barely a blip in the vast South Pacific. At 5,000 miles from Wright’s office at Oregon State University, American Samoa [...]
July 23, 2007
The Priority of Story
Faith and reason arise from narrative
In the modern university, the academic and spiritual quests for understanding appear to be in conflict: the rational versus the mystical. The natural versus the supernatural. The intellectual versus the intuitive. Mind versus heart. But these are false dichotomies, according to OSU English Professor Chris Anderson. The quest of the scholar, he argues, is the [...]
July 23, 2007
Heady Discovery
Sensory science helps microbrewery
Under the rosy glow of deep-red lights, a panel of tasters swirl, sniff and sip mystery beers from dark-red glasses. On rating sheets, they note hints of lemon, straw, tea, smoke, malt, soy, sulfide, even dirty sweat socks. The palate and the patience to parse these subtleties are qualities revered by craft brewers who, after [...]
July 23, 2007
Oregon Online
Natural resources on the Web
Have you ever tried to imagine how the Willamette Valley will look when your grandchildren are grown? Now you can go beyond imagining. Three visions of the valley’s future are laid out in the Willamette Basin Explorer, which is part of a new family of Web sites called Oregon Explorer. Curious about the quality-of-life consequences [...]
July 23, 2007
More Than Machines
TekBots bring students together
Educating tomorrow’s electrical engineers has come to this: Teamwork, creativity and ownership are as important as the principles of theory and design. All get rolled into a box that first-year Oregon State University students receive in their introduction to the field. Inside are circuit and charger boards, wheels, a steel roller ball and assorted electrical [...]
July 23, 2007
Glass Half Full (roughly speaking)
It takes a model to measure subsurface water
The next time you sip a glass of spring water, consider this: Before it got to your lips, that water was soaking through soil, creeping along basalt crevices or flowing through porous volcanic rock. It nurtured microbes, carried dissolved minerals and may have spread the byproducts of human activities. Its pivotal role in the environment [...]
July 23, 2007
Vital Signs
In late April, lush vegetation hems the Coquille Valley in hues of emerald and chartreuse and the forest-greens of Douglas fir. The fertile earth, alive with new growth, suggests vitality and prosperity. On Main Street, the truth is more complicated than that. Like so many rural Oregon communities, the small towns snuggled against timbered hills [...]
July 23, 2007
Grasping for Air
Nighttime breezes may be key to mountain forests
Under a blue sky in mid-March, an Oregon State University research team left Corvallis to collect data in a valley deep in Oregon’s western Cascades. The two-hour ride to the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest gave the technicians and graduate students time to catch up before arriving at the facility’s headquarters near Blue River. They would [...]
July 22, 2007
Winds of Change
Scientists link air and water currents as shifting conditions take their toll on the Oregon coast
In his 32 years as a crab fisherman off the central Oregon coast, Al Pazar has pulled up a lot of strange things in his pots: wolf eels, skates, huge starfish, fossilized rocks, octopi, fish that rarely stray south of Alaska, and others that prefer the warm subtropical waters off Mexico. But until July 2002, [...]
July 22, 2007
Energy Source
Nutrition and exercise feed healthy habits
The mixed messages blare at every grocery checkout: supermodels smiling seductively from magazines that push chocolate-cake recipes and weight-loss tips on the same page. No wonder millions of American females struggle with food and body image, laments OSU Professor Melinda Manore. The health of women across the age and activity spectrums — from teenage Olympic [...]
July 4, 2007
Salmon Survival
Ocean conditions play a key role in the health of Northwest salmon runs, and scientists at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center are trying to pinpoint why. Clearly there are more salmon during cold-water regimes, when strong and persistent upwelling fertilizes the marine food web. Bill Peterson, a federal biologist at the Hatfield Center, says one [...]
