The grasslands of Inner Mongolia are giving way to desert as modernization forces nomads to give up their ancient herding practices.

In tune with nature’s seasonal shadings, nomads once roamed across the grasslands of Inner Mongolia on China’s northern frontier. For generations, bands of herders moved across the landscape — matching the dietary needs of livestock to the cycles of plants, striking an ecological and cultural balance.

But that ancient pattern is teetering, warns Oregon State graduate anthropology student Tom Conte, who lived with a group of herders while he studied their changing way of life. Pressure from encroaching modernization is threatening traditional patterns of migration and collaboration, he concludes. The grasslands that stretch forever under an endless sky are also stressed. The longtime symbiosis between grazing and growing, which mutually benefited lifeways, livestock and landscapes, is badly frayed.

Less Grass, More Sand

Bumping along a dirt track, it takes 45 minutes to reach houses outside the tiny village of Dashimo, where Conte stayed while interviewing herders for his master’s thesis. The sparsely populated landscape gives the impression of boundless space, a foreign sensation to a guy of Italian ancestry raised in the Bronx. “There’ve been times in history when an Italian has met with Mongolians — Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, for example,” he jokes. “This is more Joe Pesci than Marco Polo.”

The ground that surrounds Dashimo reveals a troubling ecological process that’s stripping vegetation from arid lands in Inner Mongolia and elsewhere around the world: desertification. Dashimo’s once-lush sea of grass is giving way to sand. A symptom of land privatization — a land-use policy implemented by the Chinese government in the 1970s — desert encroachment is undermining the livelihoods and traditions of herders, according to Conte.

“It’s important to study these things because they’re disappearing,” he says.“Studies show the desert expands more than 10,000 square kilometers a year in China.”

The issues surrounding grassland degradation are complex in this remote region, home mainly to ethnic Mongolians and a minority of Han Chinese (As a whole, Han Chinese comprise about 80 percent of Inner Mongolia’s population of almost 25 million). The herders are being pushed aside to make way for industrialization, mining and privatization, Conte explains.

“Originally the land was managed collectively, until the Chinese government decided to privatize,” he says. “Privatization worked really well in terms of agriculture. But pastoralism is different. Privately managed land has led to widespread degradation of the grassland. Animals eat everything, and the desert expands.”

Anthropology grad student Tom Conte found a system out of sync with nature. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

It’s a tense issue in China. In 2011, a herder was killed by a coal truck as he was trying to stop a mining convoy that was driving across prairie land. His death sparked the biggest wave of demonstrations Inner Mongolia had seen in decades. The region is China’s largest coal producer. It’s also the largest supplier of rare-earth metals in the world — materials that end up in products consumed in the West, like smart phones, solar panels and wind turbines.

Many herders began settling about 20 years ago as the government forced them onto single plots of land that fail to meet all their animals’ needs. Families that once cooperated are now living separately. While some rent additional land where they can move their animals, the land policy, overall, spurs dangerous overgrazing, Conte says. “If you stay in one place, you exhaust the resources.”

But overgrazing is just one outcome of settlement. Another is the loss of traditional kin-based ties that bound herders and enabled cooperation in moving livestock to prime forage, a problem Conte is addressing in his research. “Herders believe that ecological degradation has increased and cooperation has decreased,” he sums up.

Lessons from America

The danger to the herders’ culture, as well as to the land, mirrors our own history, argues Bryan Tilt, Conte’s thesis adviser and an associate professor of anthropology. “The situation of minority populations in China is not unlike the American Indian story,” Tilt says. “Only in folks of this region, the changes are much more recent. There is an element of culture loss that’s happening.”

“We know a lot of people think the nomadic lifestyle is romantic because herders are tied to the land,” Conte says. “But it’s not just romantic. There are concrete data showing that the ways the people manage land is sustainable. And better. Different animals — goats, sheep, camels, horses, yaks — have different water and plant species preferences given the season. A lot of traditional ecological knowledge went into the decision of where to move and when.”

All of the herders Conte interviewed — those who have settled as well as those who still migrate — are feeling the strain in an altered landscape. “You can’t work with people and not have a sense of empathy or wanting to effect change for the better.”

John Miedema of BioLogical Carbon Inc., Philomath, Ore., makes biochar at a wood processing plant and explains his process in this video.

Perry Morrow, student in the Oregon State University Water Resources Graduate Program, produced this video on biochar, the carbonized remains of plants. Turning low-value wood and other biomass into biochar sequesters carbon from the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The resulting material may also benefit water quality by absorbing pollutants such as copper, lead, zinc and other metals.

Heidi Igarashi studies the “sandwich generation,” parents who care for their adult children as well as their own aging parents. Listen to a podcast with Igarashi. (Photo: Nick Houtman)

For many first-year college students, going to a new school represents “leaving the nest.” They are now responsible for housing, bills and their own education. But according to Heidi Igarashi , a research assistant at Oregon State University, most are still in their parents’ nest and will be for several more years.

“Parents used to expect that their kids should be financially independent by 22,” she says, “but now the majority of them say 25. There is a longer run up to adulthood.”

Igarashi, a doctoral student who works with Carolyn Aldwin, professor of human development and family sciences, recently published a study looking at parents who support both adult children (ages 18 to 30) and their own elderly parents. She found that while parental support may benefit maturing adults, things get more difficult when they care for the older generation.

“The idea of the empty nest is based on this probably antiquated idea of the life cycle where you get married, have children, your children grow up, ‘leave the nest,’ and the parents are there to ride out those last periods of time. ‘Empty nest,’” she adds, “applies to some people but not many.”

It is simply taking longer for young adults to take flight. That trend shows up in a variety of ways, from education to insurance.  For example, Igarashi points to an increased interest and a need for further education in graduate school.  Health insurance has also changed. Prior to 2010, states had varying rules on dependency for health insurance purposes. Now federal law says a child can remain on a parent’s insurance until age 26. Igarashi attributes these cultural changes to the nest being full longer.

Igarashi found that most parents were happy to support their children for longer periods of time. Parents, she suggests, are simply continuing what they had been doing. However, she also looked at them as caregivers for their own parents. This type of caring is increasingly common. The average couple has more parents than children. But that doesn’t mean it is always received with ease. Igarashi calls this type of support “caring up.” On the generational ladder, the older you get, the higher on the ladder you are.

Caring Up Is Hard to Do

“Caring up is hard on everyone. The midlife folks were very happy to provide care up, but it came with this burden, feelings of angst, anxiety, uncertainty. Not only for themselves, but for their parents too.” Some elderly parents had Alzheimer’s, and some were bed ridden. In these circumstances, feelings of anxiety are natural, she adds.

Igarashi did her study during the economic recession of 2008-2009. Shortly after she published her results, the PEW Research Center released a similar but separate study that added more detail. PEW found that in 2012, 47% of midlife adults (ages 40-59) were supporting a child, while they were also taking care of a parent older than 65-years-old. Pew Researchers referred to these individuals as part of a “sandwich generation,” meaning they provide both care up and care down the generational ladder.

Despite any feelings of potential burdens, Igarashi’s study found that during these changing economic times, being a “sandwich generation” may not be a bad thing. Young adults get the support they need to take flight from the nest when they are truly ready, whether for educational, financial or other reasons.

“In our society we tend to really value autonomy and independence, and hold it almost paramount to almost anything else,” says Igarashi. “What our study indicates is that it’s really interdependence that may become really important, especially in this changing socioeconomic world where you really need other people around you to really work together.”

Most college students fit into the category of nestlings learning to fly. While the job market will continue to create challenges, Igarashi provides encouragement that parents are willing to assist their children during these changing times even while assisting parents of their own.

Co-authors on Igarashi’s study include Oregon State professor Karen Hooker, Deborah P. Coehlo (OSU-Cascades) and Margaret M. Manoogian (Western Oregon University).

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See Igarashi’s report, “My Nest Is Full”: Intergenerational relationships at midlife, in the Oregon State University Scholar’s Archive.

See the PEW Research Center study on mid-life adults: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/01/30/the-sandwich-generation/

“Each campus is allowed to nominate four students for the award and for the first time, all four students nominated by OSU were recognized by the national Goldwater selection committee,” said Kevin Ahern, director of undergraduate research at Oregon State.

The one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to $7,500 per year.

The four awardees are all students in the University Honors College and the College of Science. They are:

Helen Hobbs (Photo: Kevin Ahern)

Helen Hobbs, a junior from Butte, Montana, is majoring in biochemistry/biophysics. She is a two-time participant in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute program and is currently researching the molecular basis of aging with professor Tory Hagen. She aspires to a research career.

Thomas Pitts (Photo: Jill Wells)

Thomas Pitts, a junior from Ontario, Oregon, is majoring in math and conducts research in mathematics education and theoretical mathematics, with an emphasis on algebra and number theory. He has worked in OSU’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program in Mathematics and studies under professor Tevian Dray. His goal is research and teaching at the university level.

Justin Zhang (Photo: Kevin Ahern)

Justin Zhang, a junior from Beaverton, is majoring in biochemistry/biophysics. He has worked with associate professor Jeffrey Greenwood since his freshman year studying glioblastoma, a type of malignant brain cancer. Zhang has done internships at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Sloan-Kettering. He is looking forward to a research career in human health.

James Rekow (Photo: Jill Wells)

James Rekow, a sophomore majoring in biochemistry/biophysics from Portland, works with associate professor Andrew Buermeyer on mechanisms of DNA repair and mutation relating to colon cancer. He has been involved in undergraduate research since his freshman year, including an internship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. After attaining his Ph.D. in Environmental and Molecular Toxicology, Rekow plans to conduct research in genetic toxicology and teach at the university level.

“The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering,” said Board of Trustees Chair Peggy Goldwater Clay in announcing the awards. “The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.”

The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest

The summer is warm and sunny in Corvallis, but my travels draw me east. Over and past the Cascades is an open land where the cold sparkling waters of a river flow north, and the sweet smell of Ponderosa pine blends with the fresh scent of lodgepole — the Deschutes National Forest. My one-person tent is packed in the back of a white state-owned pick-up truck with the essentials: a sleeping bag, a GPS unit, a camera, some protein bars, lots of buffalo jerky, a “Rite in the Rain” notebook and a pencil, a brown backpack, a bright orange hard hat and a soil corer.

In the late afternoon, I arrive at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and set up camp. The Forest Service cabins are nestled next to the gurgling and gushing Deschutes, whose French name means “River of the Falls.” The sounds of the rapids downstream bring a sense of calmness to my spirit. At the campsite, the ground is laden with pinecones, and the pine drops (Pterospera andromedea) expose themselves above the dead needles, branches and other forest litter. I unpack my gear and prepare for an early start out to the field sites the next day.

Mixed stands of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine dominate the Pringle Falls forest.

As you might guess, this isn’t the typical camping trip. I am embarking on an expedition. As a graduate student in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, I am exploring something that lurks in the soils of Central Oregon — a fuzzy microscopic fungus that colonizes tree roots and might predict the future of the forest.

But why is the future of the forest at stake, and why dig underground when we are concerned about trees? The answer lies in the effects that organisms have on one another in a forest ecosystem. Like intricate underground machinery, fungi connect life-giving nutrients in the soil to roots that transport water and food to tree trunk, branch and leaf. Trees connect to climate and wildlife in an environment that evolves over time.

In the near future, scientists expect that climate will change and our forests will adapt. Tree zones will shift and a valuable tree species in the Deschutes National Forest — lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) — is predicted to decline. This change will affect people as well. Native Americans used the long, straight and lightweight poles to build teepees. Today we commercially harvest lodgepole for telephone poles and fences. Big-game animals, such as deer and elk, use lodgepole as habitat.

Pine drops

Researchers at Oregon State University suggest that, as the climate warms, lodgepole pine will decline in the Pacific Northwest by the end of the 21^st century. As a result, Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) may be able to migrate into lodgepole zones. But this migration is dependent on the distribution or co-migration of mycorrhizae (fungi that live on tree roots), which are largely unexplored in Central and Eastern Oregon. The question is: Will this migration will be successful?

To answer that question, it helps to know a little about an ancient relationship. Scientists think that mycorrhizae, the fungus colonizing tree roots, evolved with land plants. Fungi and plants have been together since the Devonian period, which began more than 400 million years ago. External root fungi, otherwise known as ectomycorrhizae, form a sheath on the exterior of tree roots. These artful fungi form symbiotic, or beneficial, relationships with their host. Once colonization is complete, they send out filaments, which mine the soil for water and essential nutrients such as nitrogen.

Ultimately, it comes down to a trade that the tree host must submit to: The tree provides carbon, in the form of sugars, to the fungus in exchange for nutrients. The relationship is essential for the host and fungus to have the highest degree of success in the ecosystem — in this case, an ecosystem that I have the privilege to explore.

Getting to the core

The author takes a soil core.

The morning sun is bright in Central Oregon, but the air is cold and crisp. On my drive to the field sites, I can see the white peaks of Three Sisters in the distance. I pull the truck into the first site, take out my maps and venture out into the forest.  My leather boots softly crunch on the dried pine needles covering the soil. I pound my soil corer into the ground making sure to take a sample of the top 15 centimeters  (about six inches) of soil. I take in the smell of fresh earth, as I unscrew the metal corer to reveal a rich brown cylindrical soil core made up of pumice, fine roots and the mycorrhizae, too small to be seen with the naked eye. I dump the dirt, fine roots and all, into a Ziploc bag and place it in my backpack for analysis.

In the lab in Corvallis, I use molecular technology, such as DNA tests, to identify the root fungi of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine. I extract DNA, compare it to mushroom DNA in a database and identify the suspects. Like a detective, I name the species and unearth the world that had lain unexamined beneath the soil. And suddenly, this underground community is less of a mystery.

Russula

Cortinarius

My analysis reveals a diversity of species: Cenococcum, a black crusty fungus that doesn’t form mushrooms; Rhizopogon, which often forms subterranean truffles; and typical mushroom producers Cortinarius, Russula and Inocybe. It also reveals that the fungal community connected to Ponderosa pine and lodgepole overlap. That means that, when it comes to soil biology at least, Ponderosa will have a high chance of survival if it migrates into a lodgepole zone.

As the climate warms and the tree zones shift, the forest where we recreate and connect with nature may not be as we remember it. The warming climate might diminish one valuable member of the community, but forests know how to persist. By looking at underground fungi, we can determine whether trees have the potential to migrate into new zones and succeed. In the future, the smell of lodgepole pine might be absent from the breeze and the long skinny poles will be no more. Instead, the presence of underground fungi suggests that we might become immersed in the rich mahogany bark and sweet scent of Ponderosa.

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Editor’s note: Maria Garcia is a master’s student working with Jane E. Smith, research botanist in the USDA Forest Service. Garcia’s research is supported by the Forest Service and by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation.

Lee Buckingam master's student in the College of Forestry, created a program that simulates greenhouse operations. (Photo: Nick Houtman)

When Lee Buckingham’s dad brought home a broken HP computer, Lee took it apart and fixed it. He was 15 years old.

Through high school and college, the Oregon State graduate student in Forest Engineering, Resources and Management fed his appetite for technology (“I like to build them from parts”) and taught himself to write programs.

Now, Buckingham will receive a prestigious award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for using his computer skills to assist the U.S. greenhouse industry. He will travel to Washington, D.C., in June to receive the USDA’s Excellence in Technology Transfer Award for 2012.

Buckingham created Virtual Grower, a program available online that enables greenhouse managers to estimate the costs of raising a crop by a specific date. “It’s kind of a SimCity for greenhouses,” said Buckingham, a native of Milan, Mich. “Most of the cost of raising a greenhouse crop is for heat. By specifying materials, dimensions, fuels, location and type of plant, growers can get an estimate of what it will cost them to produce a crop.”

From 2004 to 2005, he worked for the USDA in Toledo, Ohio. He received a master’s in plant ecology from UC-Riverside in 2009.

At Oregon State, Buckingham works with Professor Claire Montgomery to model forest vegetation in response to fire.

With a wave of the hand and click of the fingers, Jason Muhlestein controls a computer in the College of Engineering. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

Tired of doing the scroll, click and drag with a mouse? A team of Oregon State University student engineers has developed a more natural way to use computers. Their “wireless hand sensor” may not only help reduce hand and wrist injuries associated with repetitive motion but may have applications in robotics, medicine and computer gaming.

Mushfiqur Sarker, Jason Muhlestein and Anton Bilbaeno attached their sensor to a glove equipped with communications capability and conductive fabric. By moving the hand left and right or up and down, users can move objects on a computer screen. Moreover, by touching the glove’s thumb to a spot on one of the fingers, they can perform operations such as opening or closing files or navigating through a digital map.

The students won the Industry Award at the annual Oregon State engineering expo last spring. In July, they took second place (and a $7,500 award) in a national analog design contest sponsored by Texas Instruments, one of the world’s largest microprocessor manufacturers. They estimate the cost of the wireless glove at just under $50.

“It allows you to control a computer from a distance,” says Muhlestein. “It could be fit to other devices, such as a ‘smart’ TV, an air conditioner equipped with wireless capability or sundry devices in the home.”

Remote control is familiar to gamers (Nintendo’s popular Wii computer game uses a “Wiimote”), and new devices such as Leap Motion (leapmotion.com) recognize hand gestures. The students saw room for improvement. “We didn’t like the fact that you have to hold it (the Wiimote),” says Muhlestein. “Our device eliminates all of that. We also don’t need any extra hardware. Everything is on your hand.”

The heart of the invention consists of two components: an accelerometer to measure the velocity of hand movements and a gyroscope to track rotation. They comprise an “inertial measurement unit” that is attached to the back of the glove, leaving the thumb and fingers free.

In manufacturing, the glove could give technicians a natural way to control robotic arms. It could also assist surgeons in performing operations remotely.

“The wireless hand sensor project was exceptional because it approached the project from a real usability standpoint,” says Donald Heer, who taught the capstone design course in which the students were enrolled. “They thought about the user, the technology and marketability. This very broad approach really let them shine as one of the best examples of Electrical and Computer Engineering senior design.”

For the time being, further development has taken a back seat to other priorities. Sarker is now pursuing a Ph.D. in “smart grid” technologies at the University of Washington. Muhlestein has entered the master’s program at Oregon State, working in analog-to-digital signal conversion with professor Un-Ku Moon. Bilbaeno is employed by Allion Engineering Services in Portland.

If it were commercialized, their invention could compete with another innovation that traces its roots to Oregon State. Alumnus Douglas Englebart invented the computer mouse in 1964.

Julia Rosen explains how to extract ancient air from ice samples in OSU’s Ice Core Laboratory (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

A shard of ice sits on the black surface of the lab desk, buoyed in a growing puddle. Three small heads hover above in a tight huddle. “It’s cold,” notes one of the kids. Somehow, this obvious observation always catches me off guard, as if I’ve forgotten the most fundamental quality of water’s solid phase. “That’s true,” I reply, “it’s also 10,000 years old.”

“Wow!” the students chorus, and their eyes widen as they look again with renewed awe at this innocuous specimen that could have come from an ice-cube tray in their freezer. Whether I am visiting loquacious third-graders or shyly curious middle-schoolers, I am always touched by the unjaded willingness of youth to imagine and attempt to grasp the unseen. It’s the reason every scientist falls in love with science.

I analyze ice cores in the Oregon State University Ice Core Laboratory and no longer think about their cool touch. I have learned that, like people, the most interesting things about them lie hidden inside. And, like people, it takes time and patience to understand them. When we succeed, these frozen time capsules from Greenland and Antarctica allow us to reconstruct climate far into the past so that by understanding its natural rhythms and quirks, we can predict what kind of future awaits these students.

But let’s start with the obvious: a clear, smooth cylinder of ice glittering with tiny bubbles like a flute of frozen champagne. Stunningly boring to behold, only an occasional band of volcanic ash or the subtle cloudy layers formed during dusty polar winters break its translucent monotony. However, this continuity is actually an ice core’s greatest strength. It provides a complete, unbroken record of past climates, one that is unavailable in almost any other natural archive.

As detectives of Earth’s history, geologists reconstruct stories from snapshots of ancient seas and whispers of long-dead creatures, piecing together a hazy story of our planet’s past. Ice cores are the long-lost diaries of climate. Every day, they recorded the temperature, sniffed the air and noted the snowfall. They sensed changes far from their polar homes — the amount of dust lofted from Asia, the gurgle of tropical volcanoes and much more. From the top to the bottom of a core lie flakes that witnessed every moment of geologic time that elapsed in between.

Thin Air

Physicists, chemists and geologists have spent 60 years learning to translate the primordial language of ice. Early pioneers of ice-core science discovered that they could estimate temperature using the chemistry of rain and snow. As the air warms, precipitation gathers more heavy molecules and fewer light molecules (known as isotopes) of water. The ratio of these isotopes thus provides a record of temperature. These scientists had the transformative idea of using old ice to reconstruct climate by exploiting this valuable relationship.

Each new analytical tool that becomes available to scientists provides another Rosetta Stone for decoding long-lost archives of the ice. Today, we can measure trace amounts of chemical impurities deposited on the ice sheets as dust and aerosols. They tell us how sea ice waxed and waned and which way the wind blew. They reveal the fingerprints of individual volcanic eruptions. While only the pristine inner core provides suitably clean ice for these highly sensitive measurements, the “snow dust” from cutting and cleaning the core does not go to waste. It can be used, for example, to reconstruct concentrations of a rare element, beryllium-10. Produced by cosmic rays high in the atmosphere, the abundance of this element reflects shifts in solar radiation.

Lit by an Arctic midnight sun, this iceberg was spawned by one of Greenland’s fastest moving glaciers near Illulissat. About 400 feet high, it covered an area larger than a city block. (Photo: Julia Rosen)

Of all the stories that ice cores tell, however, the bubbles of air embedded within them actually contain the most impressive secrets. As snow accumulated over thousands of years, slowly hardening into solid ice and forming the massive polar ice sheets, it sealed off little breaths of ancient air between the grains of snow — the very same air we would have inhaled if we had stood on top of the ice sheet 8,000 years ago, or 80,000 or 800,000. From those microscopic samples, we can retrace the evolution of our planet’s atmosphere across almost a million years of Earth history, a period that encompasses nearly all of human existence.

Revelations

In Antarctica, where extreme cold and meager snowfall limit the flow of ice, these cores stretch back across eight glacial cycles. During each, the Earth oscillated between periods of cold climate and expansive ice, including a vast glacial blanket that smothered northern North America, and a time of balmy warmth with ice sheets comparable in size to those on Earth today. Wobbles in the planet’s orbit periodically brought it closer to and farther from the sun’s furnace, setting the rhythm of the climatic metronome.

Across these dramatic changes, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases rose and fell with the global temperature as the Earth’s oceans and biosphere adjusted to a changing environment. These gases both responded to climate change and amplified it through their potent ability to trap the Earth’s outgoing energy. But never in the past 800,000 years did these gases reach concentrations even remotely approaching current levels, and never did they rise so quickly, or shoot up at the end of an interglacial period when the receding sun should have lulled the Earth back into an icy slumber.

At the other pole, ice cores in Greenland felt those same changes, although the records of climate before 120,000 years ago crept away through the unstoppable march of glaciers to the sea. Nonetheless, these cores tell us something else completely new. Throughout the last cold period on Earth, which our ancestors waited out in the mild climates of Africa, the Northern Hemisphere experienced a barrage of climate changes so swift and so huge that certain places on Earth warmed by 20 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of decades. The cause of these dramatic jolts remains a mystery, but their power to radically reorganize the Earth system attests to the inherent volatility of the world in which modern civilization has only recently made a home.

We are slowly beginning to understand the anatomy of global climate and how it changes, its geographic fingerprint and its tempo. Ice cores paint a complex and sometimes surprising picture, one that generations of scientists will spend decades trying to fully understand. We now know the correct greenhouse gas concentrations to feed into our calculations as we simulate past climates in order to validate models for the future.

Ice cores have made one thing abundantly clear: Humans are in uncharted territory. In 800 millennia of records, no entries document a climate like the one we live in today. Even as you read this, we are busy writing the next page of the ice-core diaries.

Illustration by Hank Osuna

Time to Listen

These observations from opposite poles forewarn a perilous future for our planet. We know without question that we’ve entered a period in geologic history for which there is no natural analog, and we know that the Earth’s climate can respond dramatically to perhaps even the smallest nudge.

However, the most terrifying lesson I learned from ice cores did not come from drilling into the past, but from just standing on the surface. At 80 degrees North, well above the Arctic Circle in the empty white wilds of the Greenland ice sheet, I watched a supply plane on skis repeatedly try to lift off. First the crew dumped cargo and then off-loaded all their fuel except what they needed to get home. Finally, on their seventh attempt, they succeeded.

The problem? The snow had warmed to the freezing point, and microscopic drops of water on the surface made the friction between the skis and the ice too great to break. Last summer, 97 percent of the surface of Greenland experienced temperatures above freezing, more than any year in NASA’s 30 years of satellite observations.

The ice cores have told us all they know, and now it’s up to us to listen.

Editor’s note: Julia Rosen is working toward her Ph.D. in the Oregon State University Ice Core Laboratory under the guidance of Ed Brook, professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Support for the lab has come from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs.

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For more information:

Analysis of Greenland Ice Cores Adds to Historical Record and May Provide Glimpse into Climate’s Future (Jan. 24, 2013)

Antarctic Ice Core Contains Unrivaled Detail of Past Climate, (Feb. 5, 2013)

Human Development and Family Studies Ph.D. student Sara Schmitt is finding out just how much.

“One of the primary studies I’ve been involved in here at Oregon State is trying to develop a screening tool that parents, teachers and researchers can use to see how ready kids are for school in terms of their self-regulation or self-control skills,” she says.

Games provide a way to test children's readiness for school. (Photo: Alan Calvert)

Led by Schmitt’s mentor, Associate Professor Megan McClelland, Schmitt has been working on two large studies. One, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, focuses on developing a screening tool for young children that will help prepare them for school entry. The other is an intervention to help children practice the skills they need to be ready for kindergarten.

“In both of those projects, Sara’s been an invaluable part of our research team,” McClelland says. “She’s a graduate research assistant and has worked just unbelievably well with parents, teachers and all of our staff.”

Schmitt always knew she wanted to work with children in some sort of capacity, but it wasn’t until she joined an AmeriCorps team that she realized how she would do so.

“As an AmeriCorps volunteer, I worked at a homeless shelter and taught preschool classes there as well as tutored school-aged children,” she says. “It was at this point that I realized that these kids were really behind, both behaviorally and academically, and I knew that I wanted to devote my career to researching ways to help children from disadvantage.”

Her work as a volunteer was the perfect training for her current research at the child development laboratory.

“We can take this knowledge and develop interventions that we can take into the community, particularly communities that may have children at risk for poor developmental outcomes,” she says.

Sara Schmitt would like to create a screening tool to see how prepared children are for school. (Photo: Alan Calvert)

The types of skills Schmitt studies include children’s ability to pay attention, to persist on tasks, to remember instruction and rules and to inhibit responses. An example of this is remembering to raise a hand rather than blurting out an answer.

“We primarily play really fun games with the kids that allow them to practice these skills,” she says.

One game they play is the red light/green light game. First, Schmitt asks them to play in the traditional way, where red means stop and green means go, but then she adds and changes rules. By doing so, children have to adapt, remember, pay attention and abide by the new rules.

Another game Sara plays is a variation of “Simon Says” – or in her case, “Sara Says.” In this game, children perform the action asked of them when Schmitt says “Sara Says,” and don’t perform it when she doesn’t say “Sara Says.” The point of this game is to help kids stop, think and then act.

“What we learn from this work is where kids are at in terms of their school readiness,” she adds. “What we can do with that is provide interventions for children who are really struggling with these skills.”

In a recent study, Schmitt and her team of researchers played these games with children at a school over eight weeks. They found that kids who participated in the games did better at the end of their preschool year.

The researchers also provide parents and teachers with a list of games in hopes that parents will play with their children at home. Teachers could use the games in the classroom as a way to prepare kids for school.

“Not only do I want to continue this pathway of research and try to figure out ways to help kids from at-risk backgrounds, but I’m also looking forward to engaging undergraduates in my work, teaching them how to work with children in school settings, how to parent in successful ways, and to promote whatever career that they want in child development,” Schmitt says.

Ph.D. student Sara Schmitt is in the Human Development and Family Studies program at Oregon State. (Photo: Alan Calvert)

Schmitt’s graduate training is setting the stage for her future as an academic. She would like to turn this pathway of research into a faculty position at a university.

“I think Sara has enormous potential to be such a successful researcher and teacher,” McClelland says. “She and all of our graduate students here in HDFS have just received such excellent training in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences to form a foundation for a really successful career.”

“Promoting school readiness for children at-risk not only helps them do better in school, but lays the foundation for a healthy and successful lifelong trajectory, which means the world to me,” Schmitt explains. “I think about those homeless kids I worked with back in the AmeriCorps year, and I just know that they needed so much more support than I could offer. I hope to continue to do this work and help these kids do better in school and have an overall healthy life.”

Minhazur Sarker, an undergraduate in the College of Science, works with cell cultures in Tory Hagen's lab in the Linus Pauling Institute (Photo: Karl Maazdam)

“My father told me, ‘To get the most out of research, get there before everyone else and leave after everyone else,’” Sarker says.

And he’s following that advice, sometimes arriving even earlier than 7 a.m. and working into the evening. The first thing Sarker does when he gets to the lab is check on his cells. In a room off the main lab, he takes a flask of vibrant orange liquid out of a small refrigerator. The liquid, which resembles flat orange soda, contains the cells that Sarker’s project hinges on. By experimenting with human and rodent cells, he’s hoping to help discover a means to slow aging in humans.

A senior studying microbiology, Sarker arranged his project through the Oregon State University Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) undergraduate research program. One of the university’s most prestigious research opportunities, the institute facilitates paid research positions for undergraduate students in projects that are usually completed over the summer. While HHMI students work in all areas of the sciences, Sarker’s project draws on Oregon State’s strength in the health sciences and Hagen’s innovative research on healthy aging. When Sarker joined Hagen’s lab at the end of last school year, Hagen asked him to explore a possible avenue to promote healthier aging that began with an unlikely source — the naked mole rat.

The only cold-blooded mammal, the naked mole rat has a low metabolic rate and spends its life underground, all characteristics that contrast sharply with human life. But the naked mole rat also has something that humans have pursued for centuries: the key to longevity. These rodents, Sarker says, can live up to 30 years — 10 times the lifespan of other rats. And Hagen has an idea of what the naked mole rats’ secret might be.

Fewer calories, longer life

“When you think aging, you think of the damages that occur in the body, but people forget the other half, the body’s defense mechanisms and the way it fixes things up,” Sarker says. “Aging is two things: destructive processes and the responses.”

The quality of those response processes deteriorates over time, allowing degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s to develop because the body’s defenses can’t keep up with the damage being done. But a process known as the heat shock protein response, which involves the refolding of proteins that are disordered by physical stress on the body, has been shown to remain active longer as a result of caloric restriction. A restricted diet like that of the naked mole rat, Hagen says, allows the body’s proteins to remain in balance longer and stimulates the heat shock protein response more often. By this means, Hagen believes, the naked mole rat may be improving its longevity.

“The only real known paradigm of increasing mean lifetime of species is dietary and caloric restriction,” Hagen says. “When you restrict calories but provide vitamins and micronutrients to maintain basic function, the species lives for an inordinately long time.”

Hagen would like to see humans take advantage of a more enduring heat shock protein response, but he’s not expecting people to live on a fraction of the calories in an average diet.

“Part of our work in healthy aging is to try to have that benefit without the burden,” Hagen says. “Part of that is to find mimics that would add nothing to the diet and certainly could increase the health span.”

Cell by cell

Under the microscope, the orange liquid becomes a field of bulbous white shapes that resemble burst popcorn kernels. The cells grow in a liquid medium until there are too many for the flask, when Sarker splits them into new containers to be used in testing or to continue growing. By this means, he’s able to keep the cells growing indefinitely.

Performing cell culture requires precision and absolute sterilization, creating a sense of pressure that Sarker believes sometimes wards off students who are interested in research.

“You learn by doing,” he says. “That’s what research is. I tell new students, you have four years to mess up in college; learn from your mistakes. Do it — screw up, mess it up — no one is going to hold it against you.”

The mimic that Hagen asked Sarker to experiment with is geranylgeranylacetone, a compound that has been safely used to treat ulcers and arthritis overseas. Sarker is testing GGA’s potential to induce a particular heat shock protein response, HSP70, by applying it to cells of the four species and then exposing the cells to stressful conditions to activate the response. By analyzing how the cells react to the stress, he hopes to determine whether the compound could be used to enhance the heat shock protein response.

Though Sarker’s project began during the summer and the HHMI program doesn’t require him to work beyond that period, he’s committed to taking the project as far as he can. During his final year at Oregon State, Sarker will continue working in Hagen’s lab.

“I have some preliminary results, but there’s a lot more I can do with it, so I really want to take ownership of it and move forward,” Sarker says. “It’s more about the process and not just about the completion and getting a result. Having a positive result is a good thing, but if you don’t get there, did you learn from it?”

Research as an undergraduate

While Sarker continues to explore whether GGA could slow the effects of aging in humans, he maintains a full schedule. In addition to working at the lab, preparing to attend medical school and running his own online business netting lacrosse sticks, he works as a tour guide for the College of Science. After spending a morning piping cell cultures into new plates and running samples, Sarker can be found walking backwards across campus with a group of prospective students and their parents in tow.

As comfortable with the campus visitors as he is in the lab, Sarker uses his own experiences to encourage younger students to take advantage of research opportunities in college.

“When you do research on campus, you’re learning, you’re helping your future and you’re getting paid,” he tells students on his tours. “That’s a triple positive, and that doesn’t happen very often, so when you find one, take it and run for it.”

Through undergraduate research programs like the HHMI, students can gain skills and experience that aren’t available elsewhere — and learn from renowned researchers such as Hagen. According to Hagen, involving students in research is a natural priority, both in his lab and at Oregon State University.

“We don’t have big barriers at Oregon State; faculty and students interact very easily,” Hagen says. “I’ve been here for 14 years and had undergraduate students in our lab pretty much all those years. It’s part of our reason for being here, showing students what a lab experience is like.”

Sarker ends his tours in front of the Linus Pauling Science Center, where he’s able to point out the floor he works on and describe how hands-on work at Oregon State has benefited his education, before heading back to the lab.

“That’s really the reason to come here, for the experiential learning,” Sarker says. “Research teaches you maturity, to be respectful, give presentations, interact with people, as well as organization and time management. These are skills you’re not going to get in the classroom.”

Madelaine Katz catches a perfect day at Oceanside

Ever since I was very small, I’ve been enraptured by the animal kingdom. And I was very lucky: My mom fueled this fire by taking me to as many zoos, aquariums, wildlife centers and nature parks as possible on our family travels. It was a big part of my upbringing. Now, as a semi-autonomous and somewhat-functioning adult, I still manage to find ways to go to these places as much as humanly possible.

The most recent of these visits was to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

After the exhausting whirlwind that was my START orientation at Oregon State this summer, I was feeling a little bit panicked about the whole moving-across-the-continent-for-college ordeal. Being a native East Coaster from North Carolina, the move to Oregon was going to be quite a shift for me. I was excited, yes, but a heavy dose of nerves was definitely there too. And what was the one thing that could make me feel myself?

“Dad, can we drive out to Newport? There’s an aquarium there!”

And so we did. It was mostly empty on that sleepy Wednesday afternoon, and I happily roamed around the exhibits, lost and immersed in my own underwater world.

Rounding the corner from some dozing sea otters, I approached my favorite animal, the Great Pacific Octopus. As I walked toward the tank, however, a disgruntled family was heading in the opposite direction, expressing frustration. “Why didn’t it come out?” they were complaining. “Why was it hiding in a hole like that?”

As they made their way noisy way out, I slowly walked up to the glass window of the octopus’ tank. It would appear completely devoid of life if it were not for the single, telltale tentacle spilling out from a small dark crevice in the corner.

Even though I couldn’t see more than this lone tentacle, a flood of simple respect washed over me for this incredible creature. The intelligence of these mollusks is legendary among biologists. I’ve heard many a story of their cunning and wit, whether it be outsmarting predatory sharks three times their size, or figuring out how to make a coconut shell a useful tool for shelter. I closed my eyes and placed my hand on the glass, and smiled to myself. I was, and still am, in love with the fact that these animals exist in the world.

I sighed, and opened my eyes. And splayed out on the bottom of the tank, big and bold and totally orange, was the octopus, come out from hiding in its watery cave. And I swear it was looking at me.

Some part of me will always doubt it, but the larger and more playful side of me believes that the animal felt what I was feeling and came out to say hello, or at least to investigate. A volunteer told me later that the nocturnal octopus rarely comes out during the day, and that I was lucky to be able to witness it.

Lucky, yes.  I felt wonderfully lucky to be able to share that moment with that phenomenal cephalopod. But was it happenstance? Who knows, but that creature sure had a wonderful effect on me, and maybe, just maybe, I had a similar effect on him.

Madelaine Katz is a freshman in the University Honors College majoring in zoology.

Meanwhile, other Oregon State students were at work in equally exotic places around the planet, from Kenya to New Zealand to the countryside of France. They worked on projects as diverse as engineering water systems and experimenting with emulsifiers in ice cream. Here’s a sampling of stories from these intrepid student researchers around the globe.

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Pumped Up

Zachary Dunn helps bring clean water to Kenyan farmers.
Read more…

Legacy of a Whale

Marine mammal biologist Renee Albertson never forgot her childhood encounter with a killer whale.
Read more…

The Earth Burps and Burns

Whether Earth’s gaseous emissions bubble up from “mud volcanoes” or seep out of the ocean floor, WeiLi Hong has his monitoring ear to the ground.
Read more…

The Milky Way

Rachel Miller puts French ice cream to the taste and texture test.
Read more…

Horns of Africa

In Yachats, where Dylan McDowell grew up, wildlife meant seals, whales and sandpipers. A new assemblage greets him in Zimbabwe and Tanzania.Read more…

Fisher of Rivers

Haley Ohms has monitored salmon runs in Alaska followed fish in Oregon and California. Where else to go next but Hokkaido?Read more…

Dolphin Defender

Rebecca Hamner tracked the world’s smallest and most endangered dolphins in the waters off New Zealand.Read more…

Labor of Love

Giving birth shouldn’t create a public health crisis.Read more…

Sea Urchin

Ireland’s first marine reserve caught the fancy of Caitlyn Clark.Read more…

Dylan McDowell will spend six months studying wildlife management in Africa. (Photo courtesy of Dylan McDowell)

In the place where Dylan McDowell grew up, wildlife meant sea lions, sandpipers, salmon and passing pods of spouting whales. Where he’s going this summer, wildlife means something else entirely, something reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, exotic and fearsome: wildebeests, jackals, baboons, leopards, warthogs. And rhinos that have been poached nearly to extinction.

These are the beasts McDowell will encounter when he travels to Africa for six months of study and research, first with Nyati Conservation Corps in Zimbabwe and then with SIT Study Abroad in Tanzania.

But wild animals aren’t his sole interest. Humans captivate him, too. “I feel it’s my responsibility as a person to explore and embrace different cultures,” says McDowell, who’s working on two degrees at Oregon State University, one in K-12 education and the other in fisheries and wildlife.

Giraffes at the Cawston Block in Zimbabwe (Photo: Dylan McDowell)

In McDowell’s coastal hometown of Yachats, skin-color variations had more to do with degrees of sunburn than with ethnic or racial diversity. “There was only one African-American student in my high school,” McDowell says, sounding a little regretful. He wants to fill that cultural gap in his education. So he’s heading to Africa not only to study wildlife conservation but also to meet African people and learn firsthand about their values, their politics, their struggles, their aspirations.

“I like looking at things through different lenses,” McDowell explains. Which might explain why he gravitates toward the junctures of disparate fields — for instance, the nexus of science and public policy, his current passion. The program in Tanzania fits that passion to a T. “The program focuses on wildlife conservation and political ecology — basically, how people interact with the environment,” he says.

So although his research is on rhinos, it’s as much about the humans who kill and sell the endangered ungulates for their horns, believed to be an aphrodisiac in some Asian societies. It’s also about the people who protect the massive horned animals, which are being reintroduced to the Serengeti where they have been wiped out.

“Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world,” says McDowell. “There’s a lot of money in the rhino trade.” Noting that Africa is “still trying to recover from European hegemony” of earlier decades, he argues that to take an American perspective on the rhino issue is to miss the social, political and cultural context in which the poaching occurs.

Endangered rhinos must co-exist with people in some of the world's poorest countries. (Photo: Engineers Without Borders, Oregon State University)

Besides interviewing rangers and local residents about the rhinos, McDowell will live with members of the Maasai tribe, camp out during a four-week safari and take classes in Swahili.

McDowell may not have had many cross-cultural experiences growing up in Yachats, but he did get plenty of cross-species interactions at the Oregon Coast Aquarium as a volunteer and later as a part-time guide and an aquarist. He became acquainted with puffins and octopi, whiskered otters lolling in their artificial habitat and ethereal jellyfish pulsing in their tubular tank. He even kissed a sea lion named Leah. “Very fishy,” is how he describes the marine-mammal’s smooch, for which tourists happily paid extra as part of a behind-the-scenes tour.

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Follow McDowell’s travels through his blog, Under the Baobab Tree.

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) at 541-737-3006.

Caitlyn Clark's enthusiasm for ecological research wasn't deterred by her trip to mosquito-infested Manitoba arctic tundra (Photo courtesy of Caitlyn Clark)

On her first-ever research trip, Caitlyn Clark trudged up and down hundreds of spongy hummocks spanning miles of arctic tundra, all the while swatting at giant mosquitoes and scanning for hungry polar bears. She was in Manitoba to collect data about the habitats of boreal frogs and stickleback fish for Earthwatch Institute Student Challenge Awards Program.

For a lot of people, the bumpy, buggy, beary expedition would have been their last-ever research trip. Clark, though, was enchanted. Having to sign a polar bear release form — and then spotting three of the great white predators within the first 10 minutes of arriving at the campsite — was an adrenaline rush. And those monster mosquitoes? They just made everything more amazing. The swarms of juicy bugs brought out hordes of insect eaters, which in turn enticed the meat eaters.

“There’s a huge mosquito population that bursts forth,” says Clark, who was a student at Lakeridge High School in Lake Oswego when she went to Manitoba. “We had to wear full mosquito-net gear and Deet up every morning. It was ridiculous. But the wildlife just erupts. The food web is so pronounced!”

After 10 days on the tundra, her rudder was set.

“I knew that I could do this for the rest of my life,” recalls Clark, now an Oregon State University Honors College sophomore. Her grin telegraphs her delight. “I love research.”

Lough Hyne in County Cork, Ireland, is home to plants and animals that are unique to the Emerald Isle.

But she wants her research firmly connected to solutions. That’s why she chose OSU’s Ecological Engineering program, whose focus is on “optimizing the interface between humankind and the environment,” according to its homepage.

“The mindset of the program is systems theory, understanding how all the pieces interact so we can find more natural ways to solve problems,” she says.

Solutions will be top-of-mind for Clark this summer on the rocky shores of County Cork, where she’ll be studying purple urchins in Lough Hyne, the nation’s first marine reserve. (A “lough” in this sense means a bay or inlet.) One of four American students chosen for the International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) project in Ireland, Clark will be looking for clues to the plunging numbers of urchins, which are key members of tidal-pool communities. The suspect list is topped by the invasive brown algae, Sargassum muticum.

“We’ll be looking at threats to the community structure of the lough,” says Clark, who will be the youngest member of the IRES team and one of only two American undergrads. “We’ll be trying to figure out why the urchin population is declining — is it predation? Do they need more sheltered areas? Is the algae making the rocks too slippery for the urchins to attach?”

Once those questions are answered, Clark’s devotion to solutions will come in: “Is there anything we can do to fix it and, if so, should we step in?”

Caitlyn Clark has conducted research as part of Sarah Henkel's lab at Oregon State's Hatfield Marine Science Center. (Photo courtesy of Caitlyn Clark)

Purple urchins like these on the West Coast of the United States will be Caitlyn Clark's focus in Ireland this summer. (Photo courtesy of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans)

Already, Clark is a seasoned marine researcher, collecting baseline data on bottom-dwelling organisms for Professor Sarah Henkel at OSU’s Benthic Ecology Lab/Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center. Before flying to Ireland, Clark and her teammates will spend five days at an orientation workshop in the Coos Bay area at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, run by the University of Oregon. But first, she’ll be navigating Oregon rivers as a raft guide for Oregon State’s Adventure Leadership Institute during the early summer months.

Clark is eager to see the “dramatic landscape” of the Emerald Isle. But as a native Northwesterner, she can be tough to impress. When she first saw the boreal forests of Manitoba, she remarked, “These trees are pretty short.” The scientist leading the trip turned to look at her. “You’re the one from Oregon, aren’t you?” he said.

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For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Rachel Miller will head for Poligny, France, this summer to test ice-cream recipes. (Photo: Lee Sherman)

When Rachel Miller was shadowing a pie scientist in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, no one — not her teachers, not her parents, and certainly not she herself — could have predicted that her high school job shadow would lead to possibly the coolest summer internship in the universe: tasting ice cream in France.

OK, so let’s back up a minute. A pie scientist? Really? The year was 2008, and transfats were the newest boogeyman in the food industry. The scientist Miller shadowed at Cyrus O’Leary’s Pies was reformulating recipes, replacing shortening with healthier palm oil. Sugar, too, was on the food industry’s hit list as Americans’ waistlines swelled and their blood sugar spiked. Enter low-sugar pies and yet another reformulation.

Miller admits that her teenage choice of a job shadow had more to do with her sweet tooth than with any carefully thought-out career goal. Nonetheless, a career path began to unfold for this child of a meteorologist dad and a veterinarian mom (who worked with bomb-sniffing dogs during a military tour in Kuwait). After a senior-year visit to Oregon State University, Miller set her sights on the Department of Food Science and Technology. Studying food appealed to her practical nature.

“Food science is so applicable to everyday life,” she says. “It’s not one of those sciences where you have to work in a lab. Your kitchen can be your lab.”

A part-time freshman gig crunching data for OSU cheese researcher Lisbeth Goddik introduced Miller to the chemistry, microbiology and artistry of curds and whey. So a logical spot for her first summer internship was Oregon’s famous Tillamook Cheese Factory, where she chemically analyzed milk samples and inspected incoming ingredients like sugar and salt. The next summer, she worked at the Darigold plant back home in Spokane.

Finally, her professional life looped back to its origins: that sweet tooth. At the end of her senior year at OSU, Miller was accepted as a summer intern at ENILBIO, the National School of Dairy Industry and Biotechnology. Tucked away in the picturesque French town of Poligny, the school resides in one of the world’s finest cheese-making regions. The school also researches ice cream.

Miller’s delighted grin seems to say, “Can you believe it?” as she explains her summer job testing the texture of ice cream made without chemical emulsifiers — compounds like polysorbate 80, monoglycerides and diglycerides — that give ice cream its smoothness, free of gritty ice crystals.

“It’s all about mouth feel,” she says, sounding very much like a vintner after swishing, sipping and spitting a pinot noir. “Consumers want a creamy, pleasant mouthfeel, but they don’t want the substances that create that pleasant texture. It’s a Catch 22.”

In France, she’ll be looking at what happens to ice cream, texturally, without those multisyllabic emulsifiers. It’s all part of an international trend, Miller says. More and more, consumers avoid foods listing unpronounceable additives and unrecognizable terminology on their packages. “There’s a big push to clean up the labels on food products, to limit the number of ingredients and to use only natural ones,” she says.

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For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

WeiLi Hong (Photo: Lee Sherman)

When the Earth burps, WeiLi Hong listens. Whether Earth’s gaseous emissions bubble up from “mud volcanoes” on the planet’s surface or seep out of fissures on the ocean floor, the Oregon State University Ph.D. student has his monitoring gear to the ground.

And sometimes, he’s actually in the ground.

“I fell in twice,” Hong admits, describing the hazards of surveying mud volcanoes in his home country of Taiwan. “I was trapped in thick mud up to my waist. There was nothing solid to grab onto. I had to kind of roll across the surface of the mud until I could pull myself out.”

Which brings up a couple of questions: What is a mud volcano, anyway? And why would anyone risk life and limb traipsing around these oddities of nature?

The answer is methane — millions and millions of tons of it trapped in ancient sediments. Under pressure from the bumping and grinding of tectonic plates, the gas migrates upward through Earth’s crust, seeking the atmosphere. Certain countries, such as Taiwan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Azerbaijan, are “burping gas like overfed infants,” to borrow a metaphor from one New York Times writer on the subject of methane emissions. As the methane escapes, creating a slurry of fluids and dissolved solids, volcano-like mud domes mound up across the landscape. They can be as small as a toddler’s backyard swimming pool and as big as several kilometers in diameter.

Mud can act like quicksand. WeiLi Hong needed a helping hand during his research in southern Taiwan. (Photo courtesy of WeiLi Hong)

WeiLi Hong conducts mud volcano science in Taiwan. (Photo courtesy of WeiLi Hong)

But that’s not the only way methane migrates. It comes up through the bottom of the ocean, too. On the seafloor, where it’s super-cold, seeping methane gets locked into ice-like structures called “hydrates,” Hong explains. Studying methane emissions on land, despite the pitfalls, is a walk in the park compared to studying them 2,000 feet beneath the sea.

“With mud volcanoes, we’re looking at how much methane is emitted to the atmosphere,” says Hong, who specializes in chemical oceanography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “With cold seeps, we’re looking at how much methane is emitted to the water column. To do that, we need a vessel with the ability to drill.”

The discomforts of being at sea for two months didn’t deter Hong two summers ago when, along with OSU researcher Marta Torres, he joined an exploratory expedition to Korea’s East Sea hunting for hydrates aboard the research ship Fugro Synergy. His job was to analyze the physical properties of sediment samples taken from the depths.

Methane hydrate will burn when lit. The inset image shows the structure of methane hydrate; the green and grey molecule in the center is methane and the red cage is the ice structure. (Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

For scientists and engineers, this trapped methane presents both threats and opportunities. On one hand, Hong says, melting hydrates could trigger Earth-warming greenhouse-gas emissions and tsunami-causing landslides. On the other hand, methane could be an energy bonanza — if it could be safely harnessed. That’s why the Korean government and the U.S. Department of Energy cosponsored the 2010 Ulleung Basin Gas Hydrate expedition.

“We were looking at porosity, permeability, texture, composition,” he says. “We used an X-ray machine to get 3-D images of the cores.” Opening his laptop, he clicks on a grainy gray image from the bathysphere. As he toggles the image this way and that, he points out traces of long-dead organisms in the long-buried layers. “On the computer,” he notes, “you can rotate the sediment column to see how the geosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere interact.”

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For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Renee Albertson (Photo: Lee Sherman)

Rain was pouring hard the day Renee Albertson first connected, face-to-face, with a marine mammal. She was a 7-year-old visiting British Columbia’s Sealand aquarium (Canada’s now-defunct answer to California’s SeaWorld) with her mom and dad. The daily show had been cancelled because of the downpour. The usual crowds were absent. As the soggy trio from Portland stood looking into a small tank, the resident killer whale surfaced. The young whale — a rescue named Miracle — was balancing a plastic ring on her nose. And she was looking straight at little Renee. Again and again, Renee tossed the ring. Again and again, Miracle brought it back, always to Renee.

“There was just a low fence around the tank, and you could literally reach over and throw the ring,” recalls Albertson, a Ph.D. student in Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute. “She kept coming back to me. It was a neat connection. It really made an impact on me.”

Dolphins in the Marquesas (Photo: Renee Albertson)

That childhood encounter fed Albertson’s ever-deepening fascination with marine science and led her, eventually, to join the international research team of Oregon State cetacean scientist Scott Baker. “Increasingly, I knew I wanted to help conserve these intelligent animals,” she says. “I just didn’t know how.” But with stubborn single-mindedness punctuated by moments of pure serendipity — fortuitous convergences she characterizes simply as “perfect timing”— she found her way into an elite circle of researchers who follow cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) to the farthest reaches of the Earth.

Portland to Polynesia

Albertson always loved biology. But the notion of making a living helping whales seemed unrealistic and out-of-reach. Chemistry — now there was a practical path to a career, she decided. After earning a bachelor’s in chemistry at Portland State University, Albertson took a job in an environmental lab analyzing water and soil samples. But lab work was, for her, too solitary. So she got a master’s in education at Pacific University and taught chemistry at David Douglas High School for 10 years. She loved teaching. But in the recesses of her mind, the eyes of the captive killer whale were still on her.

On the island of Hao in French Polynesia, villagers gave Renee Albertson a look at this jaw bone from a sperm whale. They agreed to let her sample the bone for genetic analysis. (Photo courtesy of Renee Albertson)

Then one day she heard about renowned whale researcher Michael Poole from a friend who had taken one of Poole’s whale-watching trips in French Polynesia. Poole had deeply inspired the friend, who encouraged Albertson to meet him. She was intrigued. “My friend didn’t realize that his whale-watching trip would end up being a life-changer for me,” Albertson says.

She emailed Poole, offering (begging, actually) to assist in his research during her summer break from teaching. “I never heard back,” she recalls. “I emailed and emailed and emailed.”

Finally, she sent one last message. She told him she was coming, regardless, and that if he didn’t need her, she joked, she guessed she would just have to spend the summer drinking martinis while writing lesson plans on the beach. Two days later, Poole’s name popped up in her inbox. His Ph.D. student wouldn’t be coming to collect samples that year, he explained, and it was humpback whale season. There was no money available for salary or living expenses. But if she were willing, he could offer her an unpaid internship.

When she got to the island of Moorea, Poole handed her not a life jacket but a notebook. Inside the fat binder was a photographic catalog of humpback whales’ tails. Poole tasked her with comparing the tails of recently sighted whales with those of previous years. “If you still like biology when you finish this, I’ll take you out in the boat,” Poole said. For two weeks Albertson “sat in a little beach cabana with a little magnifying glass, matching whale tails.”

She had earned her creds. Soon after, she was on the boat learning about dolphins, whales and conservation and helping Poole collect new whale-tail photos for the catalog. They also collected skin samples from breaching whales for eventual mitochondrial DNA analysis as part of her master’s research.

Posts From the Boat

The work led her to the University of Auckland, where Professor Baker had just accepted a new position as assistant director of the Marine Mammal Institute located in (how ironic is this?) Albertson’s home state of Oregon.

Renee Albertson and colleague Marc Oremus just published the first genetics paper on rough-toothed dolphins. Albertson, Oremus and whale researcher Michael Poole are known locally as the "French Polynesia team." Albertson says, "Believe it or not, it isn't that warm there, as our jackets illustrate. I was freezing most of the time on the boat!" (Photo courtesy of Renee Albertson)

Since joining Baker’s Cetacean Conservation and Genomics Laboratory, she has studied humpbacks in Polynesia and Antarctica, rough-toothed dolphins from Hawaii and the South Pacific, and multiple species of dolphins and whales in the Marquesas archipelago, a “hotspot” for cetacean diversity. She is coauthor on a paper about the population structure of rough-toothed dolphins recently accepted by the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. “Even though they live in the open ocean, they live in very discrete communities,” she says of the findings. She has presented to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Scientific Review Group on the status and restructuring of marine mammal stocks. And she’s back in the classroom, this time teaching courses on the conservation and biology of marine mammals, both online for OSU and at the Hatfield Marine Science Center.

Visit Albertson’s blog for a day-by-day account of her most recent research expedition http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/marquesas/

Learn more about marine mammal studies through the South Pacific Wale Research Consortium.

For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Rebecca Hamner (Photo: Lee Sherman)

A dolphin’s dorsal fin can be as distinctive as a human fingerprint. As the fin slices through the sea, its unique pattern of pigments, nicks and scars relays the animal’s personal story to observers on the surface. Often, scientists can use these markings to ID individual dolphins. But for some species, fin IDs are not precise enough. That’s why researchers like Oregon State University Ph.D. student Rebecca Hamner have turned to DNA.

Several summers ago in Australia’s Shark Bay, Hamner learned to recognize 200 distinct dorsal fins on bottlenose dolphins with names like Puck, Noggin and Tool. Their scars recorded entanglements with fishing nets, skirmishes with tiger sharks and battles among themselves for mates — personalized markings she quickly came to know around the resort town of Monkey Mia as a field assistant for two professors from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and the University of Zurich.

At Monkey Mia, fin ID was a piece of cake. “Ninety percent of the dolphins in Shark Bay have shark bites or other distinguishing scars,” notes Hamner, a student in OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute.

But then she won a Fulbright Scholarship to study the endangered Hector’s dolphin of New Zealand, which Scientific American’s “Extinction Watch” blog calls the “world’s smallest and rarest dolphins.” She joined the international research team of Scott Baker (who has appointments at both the University of Auckland and OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute) and began investigating the population structure of the Hector’s, which is about one-third the size of a bottlenose with a distinctive black mask and rounded dorsal fins. This time, she ID’d the animals by collecting tiny skin samples using a modified veterinary capture rifle to fire a floating biopsy dart from a boat.

Scouting for Scientists

So how did Hamner wind up studying dolphin genetics at the internationally known OSU Cetacean Conservation and Genomics Lab? Turns out, it had more to do with Hamner’s tenaciously tracking down faculty members who needed research assistants than with a burning passion for marine mammals per se. One research topic led to another — from dolphins to microalgae to invasive seaweed to lionfish and, finally, back to dolphins.

Hector's dolphins in Cloudy Bay, New Zealand (Photo: Anjanette Baker)

Her path to marine mammal expertise began in North Carolina, where she grew up tent camping at Lake Jeanette, tramping the woods, stalking wildlife behind the family home and splashing in the Atlantic Ocean on summer beach trips. When she started college at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, she knew she wanted to do “something with animals and nature.”

She wasted no time getting started. It was only her second week as an undergrad double-majoring in marine biology and psychology when she approached a dolphin researcher, who quickly put her to work doing photo-ID and acoustic surveys for bottlenoses along the North Carolina coast.

“I worked on those surveys every weekend for four years,” Hamner says. “That’s where I got my passion for field work.”

Species Spin

Meanwhile, during her second semester, she met a professor who was identifying microalgae by DNA sequencing. “Hmm,” she thought, “genetics is kind of interesting.” After working with him on the unicellular species (“these little green dots that you need a microscope to see”), she was recommended for a paid position with the researcher next door. So she switched to studying invasive red seaweed called Gracilaria vermiculophylla. When she was asked to process a few invasive lionfish samples sent over by one of the researcher’s collaborators, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist in Beaufort (home of the Rachel Carson Coastal Preserve), she was captivated. For the next three years, she studied the venomous fish and presented her findings in her honors thesis.

After graduation, Hamner circled back to dolphins, heading first to Shark Bay for that finny summer and then on to New Zealand. After collecting tissue and analyzing DNA from the Hector’s dolphins and comparing it against existing samples in the Cetacean Tissue Archive at the University of Auckland, the team documented an alarmingly low abundance for the subspecies called the Maui’s dolphin.

“Suddenly, I was being invited to be a scientific panel member at a risk-assessment meeting organized by the New Zealand Department of Conservation and Ministry of Primary Industries,” Hamner says, her tone a mixture of pride and surprise. Her work with Baker has spurred the New Zealand government to reevaluate current protections and extend fishing restrictions along the coastline they inhabit. “Because of our findings, the Maui’s Dolphin Threat Management Plan is being accelerated.”

With only about 55 remaining individuals over the age of 1, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

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For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Fistula survivors gathered with Bonnie Ruder at Terrewode shortly before her departure from Soroti in March. (Photo courtesy of Bonnie Ruder)

Bonnie Ruder, a midwife in Eugene and an Oregon State master’s student in public health and anthropology, had gone to Uganda to learn about a traumatic condition known as obstetric fistula. It arises when labor is prolonged and the constant pressure of the baby on the birth canal causes tissue to die and a hole to open between it and the colon or urethra. Globally, about 2 to 3 million women suffer with the condition and the heartbreaking social isolation it causes. In Uganda alone, about 140,000 women live their days unable to control persistent leakage of urine or fecal matter, and about 1,900 new cases arise there annually. (See Birth Knowledge, an October, 2011, Terra story about Ruder’s research.)

During her time in Uganda, Ruder worked in a regional hospital in the town of Soroti. She interviewed 17 fistula survivors in their homes and in the offices of Terrewode, a nearby women’s health organization. She wanted to know what they had experienced and how they understood the causes of fistula. This summer, she is analyzing the information for her master’s thesis in OSU’s Reproductive Health Lab, but her eventual goal is to assist Terrewode in educating and treating women and reducing the number of new cases.

“It was eye opening,” she says. “I heard their stories about trying to get to a hospital (to give birth), and once they got to the hospital, being ignored for days. They said that the doctors checked on them and just kept saying it wasn’t time. When it finally became ‘time,’ the baby could be dead, and they would rush the women into surgery. The women would be told their baby was dead, that there was nothing the doctor could do, and they would be sent home.”

It was common, Ruder adds, for a woman to be told nothing about what it meant to live with a fistula or how it could be treated. “Sometimes the health-care people would say ‘come back,’ but if she is really poor, how is she supposed to come back? In the meantime, her husband would leave her, and she would be pushed further into poverty to the point where she won’t be able to come back.”

Meanwhile, a potential source of help has been outlawed by the government, she adds. The majority of rural women still give birth at home with the help of a family member or traditional birth attendant. About 60 percent of Uganda’s births occur in this fashion, but in 2010, the government made birth attendants illegal. “They’re really trying to import the Western way of birth without the resources to do it. It doesn’t feel locally appropriate,” she says.

Policy Not Enforced

Fortunately for women who still rely on birth attendants, it’s a cosmetic policy, adds Ruder. Enforcement is nonexistent. Still, what little support birth attendants had received from non-profit organizations has declined, and women have a harder time getting access to attendants’ services.

At the same time, the hospital birthing system is badly overworked. So-called free beds are available, but to use them, patients must bring all their own food and supplies and have a relative or friend bring them any drugs they might need. To get timely help from a doctor or a midwife requires a “tip,” which is usually out of reach of the very poor.

While she was in Soroti, Ruder worked with Terrewode to identify women with fistulas and to get them treated. “If fistula victims can get to town, Terrewode will take them to the hospital and give them all the supplies they need and check on them daily. They’ll tip the doctor to move them up higher on the list of people in line for surgery. And when the surgery is done and women are ready to go home, they also give them bus fare,” says Ruder.

Although she returned to Oregon in March, Ruder continues to assist Terrewode by writing grant proposals. The group is educating a network of women who can promote sound birthing skills and identify fistula sufferers in need of help.

Oregon State’s relationship with Terrewode continued through the efforts of another master’s student in public health, Lauren Baur from Pennsylvania. In July, Baur followed in Ruder’s footsteps and went to Soroti to assist Terrewode. See a video about Baur’s experience below.

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For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.