Bi-Mart seems an unlikely springboard for social change. Yet tucked away in a corner of a store on the edge of Springfield, pharmacist Kathy Hahn is waging a militant campaign against pain. “I’m kind of an activist,” she says, leaning close to her listener and whispering the word “activist” as if confiding a dark secret. [...]
Archive » April, 2010
April 24, 2010
Guarding Human Health
Diseases cross barriers from animals to people
Veterinarians, as everyone knows, care for dogs, cats and livestock. Less well-known is their role in safeguarding human health. “It’s important to point out the strengths and critical assets that veterinarians bring to public health,” observes Cyril Clarke, Lois Bates Acheson Dean of Veterinary Medicine. Clarke ticks off the key intersections of animal-human health one [...]
April 24, 2010
Partners in Rural Vitality
OSU students and faculty team with Wallowa Resources to address rural development
Beautiful landscapes may inspire us, but it takes more than scenery to create community vitality. Wallowa County and rural communities across the country struggle with economic development, a future for their youth and the cultural tensions that arise from changing land ownership. For more than a decade, such issues in Wallowa have been addressed by Wallowa [...]
April 24, 2010
Oceanographer to Take Research Helm
Richard “Rick” Spinrad, who has overseen national research initiatives from leadership positions in the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Navy, will join OSU in July as vice president for research. Spinrad earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. at OSU in the 1970s and 1980s. He returns to Oregon with a wealth [...]
April 24, 2010
Fending Off a Fruit Menace
Extension videos teach you how to trap and identify the spotted wing Drosophila It’s a pest not much bigger than the head of a pin. But for Oregon farmers, the tiny fruit fly has the potential to take a giant bite out of yields — and profits. The spotted wing Drosophila has made its way [...]
April 24, 2010
Preview of Coming Attractions
After Chile, Oregon prepares for Big One
March 15, 2010: “The Bridge Team’s goal for today was to determine the geographical extent of bridge damage from the Chilean earthquakes. We did this by driving nearly 450 miles south along Route 5 (the Pan American Highway) from Santiago to Temuco, keeping along the outer edge of the zone of strong shaking (about 50 [...]
April 24, 2010
Reserve for Rockfish
Policy and science in Port Orford
Redfish Rocks is home to a diverse collection of marine species — and to a unique collaboration among fishermen, university scientists and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The jagged reef off the shores of Port Orford, one of two pilot sites in Oregon’s developing marine reserve network, was established by coastal residents who [...]
April 23, 2010
Tools of the Trade
Gramene database spurs quiet revolution in crop genetics
To find the genes that enable a crop — ryegrass or wheat, for example — to resist disease or tolerate drought can mean endless searching, not through one haystack but through many. And success is only the beginning of time-consuming breeding trials. Now scientists, farmers and plant breeders who feed the world have a new [...]
April 23, 2010
Global Ocean
Sea levels are rising. Coral reefs are under siege. “Dead zones” are proliferating. From the poles to the Equator, Oregon State University marine scientists are tackling these and other problems in their quest to understand how oceans work, how ecosystems are responding and how we can manage them. With one of the largest concentrations of [...]
April 23, 2010
Living on the Fault
On a computer generated diagram of seismic profiles from Nepal and Tibet, John Nabelek traces a thin blue line. “That’s the interface between the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates,” he says. The earthquake-prone, mountainous terrain above it is home to an estimated 40 million people. “It is very steep. In earthquakes, landslides come tumbling [...]
April 23, 2010
Gene Stalker
DNA fingerprints reveal clues to ancestry and illicit hunting of cetaceans
Scott Baker, an Oregon State University conservation geneticist and cetacean specialist whose work was featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary, “The Cove,” has been named one of four 2011 Pew Fellows in Marine Conservation.
April 23, 2010
Secret Slaughter
In the seaside village of Taiji, Japan, there’s a jarring juxtaposition: Jolly-looking tour buses shaped like happy dolphins putter up and down the streets by day, while by night fishermen secretly slaughter hundreds of panic-stricken dolphins in a nearby inlet and sell them as meat. This sinister irony permeates the Academy Award-winning movie, The Cove, [...]
April 23, 2010
Paying for Pavement
Vehicle mileage fee could replace the gas tax
Praise the gas tax. For every gallon pumped into pickups, SUVs and miserly subcompacts, Oregonians put 24¢ into the state highway fund and another 18.3¢ into the federal. On top of that, two Oregon counties (Washington and Multnomah) and 21 cities add their own levies for local roads. In 2005, about 80 percent of Oregon’s [...]
April 23, 2010
Who Pays More?
OSU economist B. Starr McMullen honored for her analysis
Nothing gets a conversation started like a proposal for a new tax or a user fee. OSU economist B. Starr McMullen discovered that when she gave public presentations about vehicle mileage fees. “This is the one topic I’ve done in my career where everyone has an opinion,” says McMullen, an expert in transportation economics. In [...]
April 23, 2010
Oxytocin, Empathy and Autism: Q&A with Sarina Rodrigues
Terra: What is the link between empathy and autism? Sarina Rodrigues: In general, people high on the autism scale don’t do particularly well on tasks where they are asked to read other people’s emotions. We call this skill “empathic accuracy.” But that doesn’t mean people with autism can’t empathize. In fact, there’s one theory that [...]
April 23, 2010
Where Chemistry Meets Compassion
Examining the biological roots of empathy
You don’t think of voles as paragons of virtue. Yet one species of these drab mouse-like creatures is loyal to its mate for life, helps around the den, cuddles its young, and generally exhibits what humans would call “family values.” Meet the true-blue prairie vole. Its cousin the meadow vole, however, is a cad. Despite [...]
April 23, 2010
The Saliva Diaries
You’ve heard of scout camp, church camp, even fat camp. But spit camp? That’s where scientists like Sarina Rodrigues go to study the practical applications of using saliva in the lab. A company called Salimetrics, a spin-off from Pennsylvania State University, offers workshops on using oral fluids as biological specimens for the behavioral, social and [...]
April 23, 2010
Finding a Balance: Q&A with Stewart Trost
Terra: Sometimes anti-obesity programs are viewed as placing emphasis on children’s weight rather than on their health. Stewart Trost: Yes, that’s true. Some programs have tried sending home BMI (body mass index) report cards to parents. They’ve had a lot of push-back from parents saying, “You’re telling me my child’s fat.” It’s difficult, because on [...]
April 17, 2010
The Mythbuster
OSU graduate student Jesse Abrams interviewed ranchers, homeowners, business people and local officials to understand changes unfolding in Wallowa County.
April 17, 2010
OSU Scholars Archive Ranks Among World’s Best
ScholarsArchive@OSU, a digital archive for scholarly writings, rates among the top institutional repositories in the world. Achieving its highest ratings yet in January 2010, OSU came in fourth nationally and 16th internationally on Web-o-Metrics Institutional Repository rankings. Only three U.S. universities — MIT (which designed the repository software), Michigan and Tufts — outranked Oregon State. [...]
