When Michael P. Nelson talks about his work, he mentions carcasses and cadavers to a startling degree — startling because Nelson is not a physician or a veterinarian or even a biologist. He’s a philosopher. So at first glance, necropsy seems an odd topic of discourse. But it starts to make sense when you notice [...]
Category » Inquiry
February 14, 2013
Posture for the Planet
Green Yoga combines inner peace with ecological consciousness
For many people, yoga is a form of relaxation. But in India, the birthplace of the exercise, yoga is beginning to stretch beyond the boundaries of one’s self and into the ecological realm. A new movement called “Green Yoga” encourages men and women who practice yoga — called yogis and yoginis — to strive for [...]
October 9, 2012
Parum Aqua Flora
Artist statement — Sidnee Snell. I was originally attracted to the lacy quality of sections of Angelicque White’s photograph. However, as I began to work with it, a floral image began to appear. Although I have no idea whether the plankton should be considered flora or fauna, I decided to follow that theme. The [...]
July 25, 2012
The Heart of Mass
Discovery of the Higgs opens a new chapter in the exploration of nature
The term “God particle” tends to rankle physicists. The flippant reference to the recently discovered particle believed to be the Higgs boson was coined by Leon Lederman, the former director of the Department of Energy’s Fermilab and Nobel Prize winning physicist. But, says Ken Krane, nuclear scientist and emeritus professor of physics at Oregon State [...]
May 30, 2012
Plates of Honor
Julie Green memorializes final meal choices by death-row prisoners
In 1997, Julie Green had just moved to Norman, Oklahoma, when she sat down to read the local paper with her morning tea and toast. As she was looking at the column of news from around the state, she was riveted by an item describing an execution that had happened the previous night. The column [...]
May 29, 2012
The Oh! Zone
Far-out findings from science
Ancient Blood Brothers Like the “sloth moth,” which lives only in the fur of the ambling two-toed and three-toed mammals, the “bat fly” exists only in the fur of the winged, cave-dwelling mammals. Now scientists know that the flea-like, blood-sucking fly has been hanging around with bats for at least 20 million years. That’s because [...]
May 24, 2012
X-ray vision
Discarded data may hold the key to a sharper view of proteins and other molecules
There’s nothing like a new pair of eyeglasses to bring fine details into sharp relief. For scientists who study the large molecules of life from proteins to DNA, the equivalent of new lenses has come in the form of an advanced method for analyzing data from X-ray crystallography experiments. Reported in this week’s issue of [...]
February 20, 2012
Learning to think like a planet
In a rapidly changing environment that will challenge human relationships, how can we maintain a respectful and ethical culture?
February 17, 2012
Communicating about climate change
Knowledge of concerns and values leads to a respectful conversation on difficult topics
I remember when I felt that the climate change workshop would go well. After a period of planning and preparation, our Oregon Sea Grant team arrived in Port Orford not knowing how the diverse community group would respond to the issue of a changing local climate when we were all actually face to face. So, [...]
December 22, 2011
Botanist leads international fungal genome project
Joey Spatafora's goal: 1,000 fungal genomes in five years
Fungi are master recyclers, turning waste into nutrients and providing humankind with everything from penicillin to pale ale. Although fungi are members of one of the world’s most diverse kingdoms, we know relatively little about them. That is about to change. A new study headed by Joseph Spatafora, an Oregon State University professor of botany [...]
October 31, 2011
Bridging the Nuclear Divide
Historian connects scientists and Navajo people
Nothing could have prepared Linda Richards for her visit to the Navajo Nation in 1986. The landscape was littered with piles of uranium debris. Signs warning of radioactive contamination were hung on playgrounds and living areas. The water wasn’t safe to drink. Families were living in homes made of radioactive materials. “Many of the people [...]
October 27, 2011
Rice Paddy People
In a rural village, farmers fight industrial pollution
The young Chinese laborer was desperate. Like millions of other migrant workers in China’s dash to industrialize, he had left his home and family to work in a factory in the rural interior. Now, environmental officials had closed the zinc smelter in Futian where he worked, and without a job, nearly out of money and [...]
October 27, 2011
Love of Language
As a college student, Bryan Tilt spent three years in South Korea and returned with a love for a new culture and its language. “I don’t know that I would have gotten into anthropology without that experience. It just opened up doors for me that I didn’t even know existed, let alone knew how to [...]
June 8, 2011
Free-Choice Science
Study confirms benefits of learning centers, museums
In a world confronted with greenhouse gases, emergent diseases, energy shortages, natural disasters, habitat loss, species extinctions and a thousand other urgent issues, public understanding of science is more essential than ever. Now, an OSU study reveals a powerful vehicle for enhancing science literacy in local communities: science museums. Science museums like the Oregon Museum [...]
June 3, 2011
Cultural Designer
Contemporary images respect Ojibway traditions
Neebinnaukzhik means “summer evening” in the Ojibway (also known as Chippewa) language of the Great Lakes region. When Neebinnaukzhik Southall was growing up, she made handcrafts — friendship bracelets, dream catchers and beaded animals — and sold them to family and friends. She called her business Summer’s Specials.
December 1, 2010
A Name for Home: King Island
If identity is linked to places on the landscape, names for those places become part of shared culture. An OSU research project has helped to document the culture of King Island, Alaska.
November 15, 2010
Jon Lewis on The Godfather
OSU professor Jon Lewis reflects on how The Godfather came to be the blockbuster that boosted the sagging fortunes of Paramount Pictures.
July 17, 2010
Put a Book in Your Backpack
Summer adventures abound in the Northwest, not only across the region’s magnificent landscape but within the covers of books written by Northwesterners about the people and places that make the region unique.
October 22, 2009
A Bracero’s Story
Farm labor is a family affair
It started with Salvador, the patriarch. In 1959, he left his wife and children near Guadalajara, Mexico, to work the fields of California.
October 9, 2009
Jon Lewis’ Five Favorite Indie Films
1. Stranger than Paradise — directed by Jim Jarmusch. Composed entirely of awkward long-takes … a low-key, black-and-white film that captured everything that was cool about off-Hollywood movies, circa 1984. 2. Repo Man — directed by Alex Cox. Also 1984. Punk aesthetics, extraterrestrials in urban LA, something about a plate of shrimp … and it [...]
April 24, 2009
On the Trail of America’s First People
Along the Oregon coast, in Idaho’s Salmon River canyon and in Baja California, Loren Davis has searched for signs of North America’s earliest inhabitants. His work along the southern Oregon coast has pushed back documented occupation of this area by 1,500 years. Now, the OSU archaeologist will take a deeper look into the inland and [...]
April 24, 2009
Hiding Man — The Art of Story
In 1948, Donald Barthelme was not quite 17 years old when he and a friend decided to hitchhike from Houston to Mexico City. They had a total of thirty dollars, and since both liked to write, they stopped at a drug store to pick up pencils and notebooks. They left a note for Barthelme’s parents [...]
April 23, 2009
Stage Kiss
Romance, history and science converge in OSU theater production
Arianne Jacques pondered the graphs projected on the screen and listened intently to Professor Ken Krane’s explanations – Newton’s First Law of Physics, Chaos Theory. She filled her notebook with scribbles about thermodynamics, algorithms, fractals and cosines. But at “iterative process,” the 21-year-old junior exclaimed, “I don’t get it!” and tossed down her pen. She [...]
February 24, 2009
Oregon’s Linguistic Landscape
In the year of statehood, Oregonians spoke many languages
What became the state of Oregon, an area stretching south from the Columbia Gorge to the Siskiyous, and east from the Pacific over the Coastal Range and Cascades to the High Desert, was a land of many languages, each one encoding information about the land and how to survive on it.
January 24, 2009
Was Nature Ever Wild?
The human face in
environmental restoration
When Spanish expeditions explored what is now the Santa Barbara, California, region in the 16th and 17th centuries, they found thriving native communities.
January 23, 2009
Lessons from the Magic Planet
Researchers are engaging the curious in meaningful inquiry
Researchers are engaging the curious in meaningful inquiry
April 30, 2008
Musical Panache
OSU steel drum ensemble taps into Caribbean rhythms
OSU percussionist Bob Brudvig is leading a five-person ensemble in a practice session on the second floor of historic Benton Hall. It may be winter in Corvallis, but the music makes you forget the drizzle outside. It evokes palm trees, Caribbean sun and pre-Lenten carnivals. Brudvig works the melody on his chrome-plated steel drum, tapping [...]
January 23, 2008
Football as Product
(From 1970 to 1973, Michael Oriard played professional football with the Kansas City Chiefs. After completing his doctorate in American literature at Stanford, he joined the OSU English department in 1976.) To a short list of milestones marking the creation of the new NFL — May 7, 1982, when Al Davis won the right to [...]
January 23, 2008
Risk Versus Cost
The Politics of Safety
Why have years of expert warnings failed to mobilize citizens and their representatives to fully fund an overhaul of transportation infrastructure? Bill Lunch, chair of OSU’s Department of Political Science, has devoted decades to observing and analyzing Oregon’s political and public-policy scene. The professor, who is well-known to listeners of Oregon Public Broadcasting, recently shared [...]
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 [...]
