“All who care for, use, or produce animals for research, testing or teaching must assume responsibility for their well-being." Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, 2011, The National Research Council. (Photo: Frank Miller)

The three rats snoozing in Cage 57 don’t know it, but they could someday help save thousands of human lives.

Snuggled in their EcoFresh bedding, the rodents are digesting a meal that may hold clues to preventing colon cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. On their cage, equipped with HEPA air-purification filters and precision temperature controls, hangs a blue index card labeled “Special Diet,” on which a researcher has scrawled “Bruss” in black felt pen. The scrawl is short for Brussels sprouts, those oft-disparaged veggies resembling tiny cabbages that are loaded with promising cancer-prevention compounds such as sulphoraphane.

To the rats, however, the pale-green pellets in their food tray (Mix AIN93 from Research Diets Inc., with sprouts added) are just dinner. That dichotomy — the rats’ bodily, mental and social needs (rodents are housed with “buddies” for company and “crawl tunnels” for enrichment) versus the precise methods of science — requires researchers to walk a tightrope, always balancing the pressing questions of medicine, for example, against the welfare of animals. The results are key to curing devastating diseases like ALS or Alzheimer’s.

Oregon State University, with 600,000 research and teaching animals (mostly fish and other aquatic species) at 30-plus sites across the state, is balancing those interests exceedingly well. That is the judgment of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC), which in March gave a glowing report after an extensive accreditation study (see “High Grades for Animal Care“). Oregon State is the 19th among the nation’s 71 land grant universities to earn full-campus AAALAC accreditation.

The snow-white, sprout-eating rats in OSU’s state-of-the-art rodent facility are just one among 400 vertebrate species that populate the university’s labs, barns, aquariums, ranches and hatcheries. Zebrafish, steelhead, beef cattle, garter snakes, rainbow trout, dairy cows, yellow- and red-legged frogs, copper and canary rockfish, lambs, koi, swine, salmon smolts and llamas are among the half-million-plus warm- and cold-blooded creatures that help educate OSU’s students, improve health (both human and animal), protect ecosystems, guide resource management, bolster local economies and engage the public.

Every last one of these creatures, from the 2-inch trout fingerling to the 2,000-pound Hereford bull, is the responsibility of Dr. Helen Diggs. If you don’t have an electronic key card, you must knock at a security door to gain admittance to her building on the west end of campus, the base from which Oregon State’s attending veterinarian oversees her vast menagerie. With the welfare of thousands of animals on her mind, she is quick to question, slow to trust (or, as she likes to say, “I trust but verify”). It’s a hyper-vigilance honed over 25 years in the field, some of those years at UC Berkeley where Diggs endured threats from animal-rights activists and had to be escorted to her car by security guards.

Tacos and M&Ms

“This is my morning health-status report,” says Diggs, pointing to a spreadsheet on her computer monitor. “Every day, every animal-facility manager checks in with me. Here’s Chad Mueller at the ag experiment station out in Union. Here’s Rob Chitwood at the fish performance lab over by the golf course. Here’s the Linus Pauling building. The Oregon hatchery. The Horse Center. Wherever I am, I can open up this online report and see what’s happening.”

So when a hamster is lethargic or a horse is lame, she’s on it. But practices haven’t always been so rigorous in the world of animal research. Diggs has been in the field long enough to have seen the transformation.

“In the decades before the 1980s, some universities were not caring for their animals as well as they should,” says Diggs, who has overseen research animals since 1985. “The facilities smelled gnarly. There were wooden floors with urine stains, poor temperature control. Regulations weren’t being enforced. No one was watching.”

This laxity was not just a problem for the animals. It was also a problem for the science.

“Researchers weren’t able to repeat their results. If I’m keeping my rats in a closet and feeding them oatmeal for breakfast, while your rats are getting leftover tacos or pancakes from the student lounge, we can’t validate our findings.”

Adds Steve Durkee, another of the university’s leading research-animal watchdogs: “If rats in one study are getting cereal while those in a second study are getting oranges and M&Ms, you can’t compare the results of the studies. By standardizing and harmonizing how animals are cared for, you create consistency across labs and institutions.” In fact, he notes, prestigious academic journals publish only findings that document the highest standards of animal care.

That’s why Diggs’ job has teeth. Sharp ones.

“I can shut a program down,” she says. “I’ve never had to do it here. But two times at other universities, I had to actually shut someone down and lock the door. If I have to go in and have a conversation with someone about their animal work, they’ll listen to me. It’s a big deal.”

Technicians and researchers rely on rodents and other animals to unlock biological mysteries. (Photo: Frank Miller)

Even though the U.S. Public Health Service mandated in the early ‘70s that all animal research institutions hire an attending vet, the top docs didn’t have any real enforcement power until the mid-‘80s. That’s when the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture cinched up the rules for labs getting federal research dollars.

“Attending vets had no real authority back in the early days,” explains Diggs, who reports to Rick Spinrad, vice president of research at Oregon State. “Some didn’t even have keys to the animal facilities. You need someone who’s minding the store, not just a figurehead.”

Minding the Store

Bob Murray waves his key card in front of a laser-triggered security panel in the $62.5 million, 1-year-old Linus Pauling Science Center, which houses the Department of Chemistry as well as the Linus Pauling Institute. The elevator opens, and he steps inside. One floor down, he flashes his card again, clicking open an electronic steel door into a small anteroom, where he slips on a gauzy yellow “isolation gown” and a pair of puffy blue booties.

For a third time, Murray brandishes his key card, unlocking yet another heavy door. He enters the inner sanctum of Oregon State’s gleaming “vivarium” — the small-mammal equivalent of an aquarium or a terrarium — where hundreds of rats and thousands of mice live, as well as a few hamsters. Not one of these furry beings can get a sniffle or a sore toe without Murray knowing about it.

“The animals are checked at least twice a day, 24-7,” says Murray, who clocked 35 years in the field, working at the New England Primate Center, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Letterman Army Medical Center, UC Berkeley and Genentech before coming to OSU last year to manage the lab-animal facilities. “We watch for changes in gait or overall appearance — does the animal’s coat look scruffy? How is the animal’s appetite and hydration? We look for lethargy, weight loss, tumors. Any health problems we report immediately to Dr. Diggs and the researchers.”

The vivarium maintains strict controls on temperature and other factors in the animals' environment.

Murray’s dad worked for the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Boston for nearly 30 years. So worrying about animal welfare is practically in his genes.  He takes pride in the life-saving research he has observed over the years, like the groundbreaking Herceptin research at Genentech that is being used to treat thousands of women with breast cancer and the malaria vaccine research at Walter Reed. Still, it’s the health and comfort of the whiskered rodents that gets him out of bed every morning at 5 o’clock and keeps him running as he oversees his team of highly trained, certified animal technicians.

“I believe strongly in the value of the research we do here, but I’m not a researcher,” Murray says, surveying his domain with the discerning gaze of a seasoned professional. “I’m into animal care.”

If Murray were to take you through the 8,000-square-foot facility where researchers investigate the links between nutrients and human health, the first thing you would notice is an obsession with cleanliness. The giant Steris cage washer (which he calls “the heartbeat of the whole facility”) sanitizes racks of cages in two cycles of 180-degree, pressurized water — and that’s after the cages have been blasted with detergent and rinsed in acid. Everywhere you look, technicians and student workers are prepping cages for incoming animals or plying mops on floors that already look immaculate. Viruses and bacteria that could sicken the animals and compromise the research don’t stand a chance.

The next thing you would notice is the attention to precision. Automated lighting simulates 12 hours of day, 12 hours of night. Electronic monitors maintain a 68- to 72-degree temperature range. An alarm alerts the staff if temperatures fall outside the range by even 1-degree Fahrenheit. There are ventilation tubes, fume hoods, stainless-steel work stations illuminated with stretchable spotlights. Every last facet of the facility is designed to protect the health and welfare of all its mammalian inhabitants, human as well as rodent.

Not until you reached the bosom of the vivarium would you come upon the rodents. The Brussels sprout-eating residents of the “rat room” were born and raised at an Indiana-based research-animal supply company called Harlan Laboratories, arriving at OSU in ventilated crates via UPS. Firms like Harlan, along with Charles River Labs, Jackson Labs and dozens of others comprise a global mega-industry in the service of science. All must adhere to the same stringent federal requirements that guide OSU’s animal-care personnel.

Diets supplemented with cancer-fighting compounds are under investigation in the Linus Pauling Science Center.

In the rat room where Rod Dashwood and other researchers in the LPI Cancer Chemoprotection Unit are looking for evidence that cruciferous vegetables like Brussels sprouts and broccoli sprouts can block the formation of colon tumors, dozens of clear-plastic cages are stacked, one above another, inside tall metal racks like high-rise condos. When you lean close and peer inside, you’re likely to get a visual jolt.

The cold, hard sterility of biomedical science is, you realize, wrapped around hundreds of breathing beings with whiskered snouts and beating hearts. They cuddle together for warmth and companionship. They look out at you with the pinkish eyes characteristic of albino Strain F344, understanding nothing about the scientific enterprise in which they play the leading role.

A Fish Like Me

So why do scientists work with animals? What can rats (Rattus norvegicus) or zebrafish (Danio rerio), seemingly so far from Homo sapiens on the tree of life, reveal about human health and disease? Turns out, many basic biological processes such as cell division, organ differentiation, gene mutation and disease formation play out similarly across species. That’s why a rat or a mouse or a fish can act as a stand-in for a human in studies on micronutrients, obesity, aging, ALS, cancer, drug efficacy, infectious disease and any number of other biomedical questions under investigation at Oregon State.

When researchers use rats, mice or other species to study processes that mimic or parallel human biology, they call it a “model.” One common model is a “knockout mouse.” It works like this: To gauge how certain genes affect certain bodily functions or disease processes, researchers “knock out” or silence the targeted gene and then study what happens when the mice get, for instance, a high-fat diet or a hormonal supplement. Knockout mice are used at OSU to study bone growth, aging, obesity, immunodeficiency and many other intricate areas of human health.

But complex animals like mice and rats are used only when there’s no other way to investigate the question at hand, Durkee stresses. Indeed, basic biomedical research begins with cells in a test tube. Only after experiments have shown great promise do scientists advance to animal work. And then, only after the animal studies achieve high rates of treatment success or cures — along with low risks for harm  — do scientists go on to conduct experiments on humans. Steve Durkee’s mother was a subject in one of those experiments, which researchers call “human” or “clinical” trials, when she was battling breast cancer.

Durkee likes to direct people to the AAALAC website’s long list of Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology over the past 110 years. Without the use of lab animals, Frederick Banting and John McLeod wouldn’t have discovered insulin and the mechanism for diabetes, winning the Nobel in 1923. Alexander Fleming, Ernst Chain and Howard Florey wouldn’t have discovered penicillin and its curative powers. Typhoid and yellow fever would still be raging across the land.

But Banting and McLeod’s methods with dogs, rabbits and fish probably would fail to pass muster with today’s regulating agencies. It’s not only federal regs that have changed — it’s the moral, philosophical and ethical sensibilities of Americans toward creatures of all kinds. Oregon State biomedical ethicist Courtney Campbell has seen a sea change over the past decade and a half.

"Nothing is more important in an animal study than the animal itself," says Steve Durkee.

“There’s a generational change going on,” says Campbell, who helped lead a series of national ethics workshops for land grant faculty in the 1990s. “The change isn’t limited to animal research at universities — it’s also about food and entertainment and sports. It’s about the treatment of animals at zoos, circuses, aquariums, rodeos. “It’s about our diets — how veganism and vegetarianism were way out in the ‘fringy granola movement’ not that long ago. “We haven’t done a complete cultural 180, but there is definitely a new moral consciousness.”

At the end of the day

In the rat room, the “Bruss” eaters live alongside the “brocc” eaters (broccoli sprouts) and the “fat” eaters (high lipids). There’s a control group, too, which eats regular rat chow. That’s so Dashwood can compare the health impacts of an ordinary diet against those of the special diets. At the study’s start, all the animals were injected with the carcinogen found in charred meat — a known cancer-causing compound to which most Americans have been exposed in barbequed burgers or grilled steaks. Once the study is over, the animals will be euthanized, humanely, in strict accordance with the protocols set out by the American Veterinary Medical Association. The researchers will then compare the number and size of colon tumors among the four groups to find out whether eating sprouts made a difference.

When they talk about ending the lives of animals used in biomedical research, Diggs, Durkee and Murray all express a resigned sadness. None of them could do their jobs without a total conviction that scientific discovery justifies the animals’ demise — that the death of a rat may someday save the life of a child. Still, it’s unsettling. “Nobody likes it,” muses Murray, his attempt at matter-of-factness not 100 percent convincing. “But it is what it is.”

Editor’s note: Read more about Oregon State’s leadership in animal ethics in the Winter 2013 Terra.

Technicians and researchers rely on rodents and other animals to unlock biological mysteries. (Photo: Frank Miller)

In awarding full accreditation to Oregon State University in March, AAALAC offered the following remarks to Rick Spinrad, vice president for research. “The Council commends you and your staff for providing and maintaining an excellent program of laboratory animal care and use.” Especially noteworthy, the council said, was the high level of administrative commitment to the animal care and use programs, evidenced by:

• The construction of the Linus Pauling building and the Livestock Pavilion

• The strong and effective program of veterinary care, evidenced by the excellent overall health status of the animals

• The engaged and effective IACUC, which was comprised of active and very knowledgeable members

• The excellent, detailed individual medical and production records maintained by the Dairy Barn

• The development of an electronic database to provide daily status reports to the attending veterinarian

• The excellent, well-documented training program

See The Ethic of Care

Helen Diggs has responsibility for the more than 600,000 research and teaching animals at Oregon State. (Photo: Frank Miller)

A human life can pivot on the quirkiest of convergences. In the life of Helen Diggs, it was the accidental nexus of five unfortunate hikers, a bagful of poisonous mushrooms and a few heroic pigs that set change in motion.

It all started early one morning in 1988 when Diggs, then a young veterinarian, heard an urgent knock at the door of the lab-animal surgery where she worked on Portland’s Pill Hill. “Doctors! Come quickly! We’ve got some patients who need livers!” The two physicians Diggs was prepping for animal surgery peeled off their latex gloves and dashed out.

The timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous for the poisoned hikers, who had eaten “death cap” mushrooms (Amanita phalloides) after mistaking them for the edible “paddy straw” species. Liver transplants were still rare in those days. But the two surgeons, one from Oregon Health & Science University and the other from the Oregon Veterans Administration, had spent the previous summer transplanting livers into research pigs with assistance from Diggs, who ran the animal O.R. So when four of the five hikers were raced to the hospital with critical organ failure, the surgeons were ready to perform the first human liver transplants ever done at OHSU.

All four patients survived. And Diggs had an epiphany.

“It was a really beautiful moment for all of us,” she recalls. “Most of the time in animal sciences, we’re working at the bottom of the research pyramid, trying to find answers at the level of basic discovery. It can seem remote from its eventual application in medicine. But this time, our work went straight to the operating room in a human hospital and saved four people’s lives. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re right at the pinnacle.’“

Life-Saving Connection

Still, she expected research to be a stopover on the way to a more “warm, fuzzy” practice. When she graduated from Oregon State’s College of Veterinary Medicine in 1985, she envisioned treating horses and cattle or, perhaps, cats and dogs. But with that urgent knock on the surgery door, the profound link between animal research and human health hit home. Her thinking began to shift.

“It makes you feel like a million bucks when you can be that close to a life-saving event,” says Diggs, OSU’s attending veterinarian for animal research.

Another convergence — this one involving lambs, preemies and high-tech blood-oxygenation pumps — clinched it for Diggs. She was pregnant with her first daughter when she and her animal techs at OHSU were testing new oxygen pumps on lambs to ensure that the life-saving machines could safely be hooked up to infants at the neonatal intensive-care unit at Portland’s Emanuel Hospital. The “lambs were just adorable, frolicking and trying to nurse on your finger,” she recalls. Having to euthanize the animals after the testing was “really hard” on the young vet. She questioned whether working with research animals was for her. Then one day while on maternity leave, she went to the hospital, her newborn bundled in her arms for a well-baby checkup. Still full of gratitude for the animal-tested technologies that had saved her own baby during a rough delivery, she bumped into a pediatric surgeon on the elevator. “Cute baby,” he remarked, abstractedly. “Oh, by the way, we’ve saved 60 preemies with that pump you helped us test.”

Her commitment to research was sealed.

Veterinary medicine wasn’t on Diggs’ radar as a girl growing up in Portland. Thanks to yet another unlikely collision of people, places and species (a village on the Chukchi Sea, a menagerie of arctic animals and scientists at a military outpost), she stumbled onto her calling in the early ‘80s. Fresh out of the University of Portland with a degree in education, Diggs landed a teaching job in Alaska. Finding herself isolated on the frigid North Slope, she filled the dark winter weekends by volunteering at the Naval Arctic Research Lab in Barrow, where veterinarians from the Lower 48 conducted thermal studies for the Department of Defense. The lab’s big predators (polar bears, wolves) and arctic birds (ptarmigans, snowy owls) grabbed her imagination. So did the science and the “friendly, embracing” spirit in the lab-animal community.

After a 25-year career that included top leadership posts at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; and the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine, she came home to Oregon State in 2009. “Extraordinary” is how Rick Spinrad, vice president for research, characterizes her leadership and national reputation. Announcing her appointment in 2011 as head vet and director of the Laboratory Animal Resources Center, he noted the astounding array of species under her care, “from tadpoles to swine.”

"By standardizing and harmonizing how animals are cared for, you create consistency across labs and institutions," says Steve Durkee

“Nothing is more important in an animal study than the animal itself,” says Steve Durkee. His tone is reminiscent of Moses handing down the stone tablets. Just like Moses, Durkee is not kidding around.

The righteous idealism that fed Durkee’s Greenpeace activism in his “younger, wilder days” still beats in his chest as administrator of OSU’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) — a group of researchers, veterinarians, ethicists and laypeople who meet monthly to review each and every proposal for an animal-using project before it can go forward. His job is to make sure no animal is used needlessly, no animal suffers undue pain, no animal dies in vain.

“It’s not a light topic,” he says, sitting in his office amidst copies of Lab Animal magazine and photos of Murphy, his Goldendoodle. “Day in and day out, it’s a whole lot of seriousness. To me, these animals are heroes. They’re giving their life for the greater good.”

Heroes, perhaps, but not volunteers. The rats nibbling on Brussels sprouts for a colon-cancer study in the Linus Pauling Science Center didn’t choose to participate. And that, precisely, is why they need a surrogate. Durkee speaks for them. He puts himself in their shoes — rather, their paws: How would it feel to be one of those rats in Cage 57? Would he be stressed-out? Lonely? Would he be bored? Would he be too hot or too cold? Would he feel pain or anxiety?

The answers to these kinds of questions determine whether a research or teaching project gets an OK from the IACUC, which Durkee advises on regulations and national standards. Every iota of proper care — from lighting and companionship to noise, vibration, enrichment and surgical procedures — is detailed in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals published by the National Research Council of the National Academies. Moses had his stone tablets. Durkee has the eighth edition of the Guide.

“We have a really serious charge,” he says, “to evaluate whether the benefits from a project justify animal life or involvement.”

Care and Security

The benefits of animal research aren’t just theoretical for Durkee. When his mom was battling breast cancer, her treatments had been tested on animals. She didn’t survive the disease. But other women have beaten breast cancer thanks to the rats, mice and other creatures that participate in biomedical studies.

In return, Durkee says, humans have an obligation to feed, house and handle animals with the utmost care — even during dire emergencies. After a severe East Coast power outage cost nine rats’ lives at his previous workplace, the University of Michigan, he wrote a comprehensive disaster-planning outline for animal facilities to follow during hurricanes, blackouts and other disasters. Coincidentally, as he was making final edits, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. So he found a very receptive audience when he presented his outline at a national animal-care conference barely two months later.

Last winter, when floods washed out roads and power lines in Benton and Lincoln counties, plans derived from his outline kicked in to protect fish and other sea life at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, as well as animals on campus. Because even when researchers are riding out the storm at home and staff are trapped by fallen trees or collapsed bridges, captive animals need food and fresh water, heating and cooling, bedding and medicine.

“Using animals is a privilege, not a right,” Durkee insists. “We owe them gratitude and respect.”

ALS Genetic and chemical interactions are being revealed in patients with Lou Gehrig’s disease. (Rats)

Fetal Developmen Cancer-fighting nutrients taken in pregnancy protect fetuses from carcinogens. (Mice)

Head and Neck Cancers These cancers contain a five-fold spike in the protein Ctip2, suggesting new tools for detection. (Mice)

Melanoma A protein called RXR-alpha in some skin cells can protect pigment cells from damage. (Mice)

Obesity A chemical in hops, xanthohumol, reduces body weight and lowers fasting plasma glucose. (Rats)

Parasitic Infection. A parasite called microsporidia, which can infect humans, can be transmitted via eggs. (Zebrafish)

Spinal Cord Injury Vitamin E given intravenously within four hours of spinal cord injury increases survival and recovery. (Rats)

Tooth Ename. Discovery of a tooth enamel-regulating protein could allow teeth to be grown in labs. (Mice)

Toxicology The chemical BPA, used in plastic food containers, causes neurobehavioral changes. (Zebrafish)

Tuberculosis Development of an oral therapy for TB and of an aerosol for treating bacterial lung diseases could lead to vaccines. (Mice)

Myra Koesdjojo

In 2005, a 23-year-old man went to a rural Burmese hospital complaining of fever. The malaria diagnosis wasn’t surprising. The disease is common in his district, but recent drug therapies have reduced death rates dramatically. The man took the prescribed medicine, artesunate supposedly made by Guilin Pharmaceutical in China. Doctors expected a full recovery.

Three days later, the patient went into a coma. Despite transfers to two other hospitals and injections of intravenous fluids and more artesunate, he died of cerebral malaria.

Analysis of the drug provided by the first hospital showed that it was a fake. Guilin makes authentic medications, but the active ingredient in the hospital’s supply was acetaminophen. A small amount of artesunate was present, about 20 percent of a normal dose, enough to fool a simple test.

Prototype drug detection system

By some estimates, a third to half of the artesunate in some countries is counterfeit. The World Health Organization has called for faster, more accurate tests, and now a team of Oregon State University chemists has stepped up with an innovative approach. They have created an inexpensive paper-based assay that detects a range of artesunate concentrations by turning shades of yellow in the presence of the drug. In OSU’s new Linus Pauling Science Center, this international team of scientists and students is also developing an affordable diagnostic device that can work with the paper test to pinpoint the amount of an active ingredient in a sample.

“We’re trying to develop a simple, rapid and inexpensive method to detect these counterfeits,” says Myra Koesdjojo, who received her Ph.D. in chemistry from Oregon State in 2009 and now manages OSU professor Vince Remcho’s lab. The native of Indonesia knows what’s at stake. Members of her family have had malaria, a disease that kills as many as 900,000 people a year, most of them children in Africa and south Asia.

Fake drugs not only allow patients to die, they also promote antibiotic resistance. By exposing pathogens to ineffective doses of pharmaceuticals, counterfeits enable disease-causing germs to survive and spread, hastening the day when they can outwit front-line drugs.

Koesdjojo and her team envision a portable testing device the size of a cell phone. Health professionals would be able to test batches of drugs quickly and cheaply. The OSU researchers have already built a prototype using off-the-shelf electrical components and open-source software. In their plans is development of an iPhone app.

Paper-based drug detection strip

“We tried a color sensor with an existing iPhone app,” says Koesdjojo. “It works pretty well. But it’s not built for this purpose. We want to use the same idea and develop our own app.”

The team has even greater ambitions: inexpensive, portable devices to detect environmental pollutants and blood-borne diseases. Koesdjojo says her brother would have benefitted. When he came down with malaria, doctors also treated him for dengue fever because the symptoms are similar and they were unable to perform a more precise test.

“Having these simple tools,” she says, “will eliminate the guessing and enable doctors to treat for the right disease.”

International Research Team
Koesdjojo’s team includes students from Oregon and Asia
Jamy Lee, a sophomore in chemistry from Tigard who received an OSU research grant to work in Koesdjojo’s lab last summer

Michael Neilson, a sophomore from Corvallis in physics

Chadd Armstrong, a senior in chemistry from Oregon who received scholarship support from a fund established by OSU alumna Gretchen Schuette (Ph.D., oceanography, ’80).  The Schuette fund supports transfer students as they acclimate to OSU and contributes to student success by promoting contacts between advisers at community colleges and Oregon State.

Anukul Boonloed (Tony), a Ph.D. student from Thailand who has received support from the Thai government for his research. He is helping to develop a collaboration with Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

Parks Remcho, Corvallis High School

YuanYuan Wu, a Ph.D. student student from Dalian, China

Adrian Gombart

Deadly staph infections may have a potent new foe: Vitamin B3. Megadoses of the vitamin can help the immune system fight the superbug MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute and other institutions have found.

The findings could lead to new treatment options for health officials who have seen rates of bacterial skin infections spike in hospitals and nursing homes. In recent years, MRSA has made aggressive forays into the wider community as well, turning up in daycares, military barracks, gyms and other places where people have skin-to-skin contact.

“This is potentially very significant,” says Oregon State researcher Adrian Gombart. “Antibiotics are wonder drugs, but they face increasing problems with resistance by various types of bacteria, especially S. aureus.” However, Gombart warns against taking high doses of the vitamin, noting that the findings haven’t yet been tested in humans.

Kathryn Higley

As concern about climate change has grown, nuclear energy — long a polarizing subject — has gained increasing favorability. Its low carbon footprint, reliable power supply and strong safety record convinced many critics that nuclear power should be a bigger part of our energy mix.

That newfound favorability suffered a setback on March 11, 2011, when an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. The resulting tsunami damaged the backup systems essential to the safe shutdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. Over the next several weeks, as the Japanese people struggled to limit the extent of the damage, a slow-motion accident unfolded. While the world watched, radioactive cesium, iodine and other nuclides were released to the air and surrounding ocean.

Suddenly, the nuclear power renaissance seemed very much in doubt.

For more than 50 years, Oregon State’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics (NERHP) has been engaged in nuclear power plant design and safety research. Lately, our department has been in the spotlight because of our focus on creating safer and simpler nuclear technology, such as the NuScale small modular reactor. But Fukushima brought attention to a lesser-known competence at OSU: radioecology.

Oregon State is one of the last U.S. academic institutions actively doing research in this unique, interdisciplinary field, which focuses on the movement of radioactive nuclides and their impact on humans and the environment. We travel to places like Johnston Atoll in the Pacific to evaluate radiological risk and find strategies to clean up Cold War-era contamination. We study radionuclide uptake by plants and animals — findings that have been incorporated into environmental protection standards for the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as guidance by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

After Fukushima, we answered hundreds of calls from the public and media. In June 2011, we participated in a Woods Hole Institution expedition to the Fukushima coast on the research vessel Ka’imikai-O-Kanaloa with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the National Science Foundation. We designed and built a radiological sampling system for seawater and helped collect and analyze marine organisms for contamination. We studied mechanisms of radiological contamination of tea plants in Japan. With Corvallis-based Earthfort, we tested the company’s proprietary compound for reducing the movement of radiocesium in soils in hopes that it might be used in Japan. And we joined the OSU Marine Council Action Coordination Team dealing with marine debris arriving on our coastline.

Our research has helped put Fukushima in perspective. The tragic accident caused a slowdown in nuclear power development worldwide. But today, scientists are reasonably confident that the radiation will have no measurable public health effects. And the best reasons for pursuing this energy technology remain: reliable power with minimal carbon emissions.

We will remain on the frontlines of reactor safety, radioecology and environmental protection. We will continue to advocate for more research and public education in radiation sciences so that as a society we can make informed choices about our energy mix.

_____________________________________

Editor’s note: Higley’s expertise has been highly sought by news media covering the consequences of the Fukushima disaster. See her comments on the burial of radioactive wastes in the Nov. 5, 2012 Christian Science Monitor.

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.
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Legacy of a Whale

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

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Sea Urchin

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In all, Oregon State research totaled almost $281 million last year, just shy of OSU’s top research performance achieved in 2010. Meanwhile, private sector financing reached nearly $35 million, a 42 percent increase in the past two years.

“Research produces revenues for practically every sector of Oregon’s economy,” said Rick Spinrad, vice president for research at Oregon State. “It’s our best bet for moving the state forward.”

Industry funding included payments for testing services, environmental analysis, prototype development and licensing fees for the use of OSU-developed intellectual property. Businesses partnering with the university ranged from global corporations (HP, Intel and British Petroleum) to Oregon companies (NuScale Power, Voxtel, Precision Castparts and Benchmade Knives).

Total technology licensing revenues increased about 3.5 percent over FY11 to $4.3 million. OSU signed 108 new licenses, a 277 percent increase, with companies in the fields of biotechnology, forest products, agriculture, healthy aging and manufacturing.

Industry funding accounted for about 12 percent of Oregon State research revenues in FY2012. (Source: OSU Research Office)

“Technology licenses enable existing and emerging businesses to turn OSU research into marketable products,” Spinrad added. “The benefits show up in faster, more efficient computer technologies; improved health care; renewable sources of energy; more competitive manufacturing; and wheat, hazelnuts and other crops that generate higher yields and resist disease.

“And it’s about more than just the economy,” Spinrad added. “Research also saves lives. It guides policies that protect public health and reduce the impact of natural hazards in our communities.”

Funding from federal agencies has declined about 5 percent since FY10. A drop was expected because in FY10 and FY11, OSU received a total of about $35 million in one-time federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Nevertheless, over a five-year period, funding from federal agencies has grown appreciably. For example, two agencies — the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy Office of Science — saw an increase in appropriations of about 27 percent. However, during that time, OSU’s grants from those two agencies grew at almost twice that rate, about 49 percent. Grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, OSU’s largest single source of research funding, grew 58 percent in that period.

“This research success is really a testament to our faculty who continue to focus on state and national priorities in areas such as food production, technology, health care, energy and the environment,” said Spinrad. “Their success makes great opportunities available to our students and is the basis for partnerships with government agencies and Oregon businesses.”

Oregon State faculty continued to increase their success rate in competitive grant proposals to foundations and federal agencies. More than 50 percent of all proposals received funding in FY12. That continues a trend that began in FY08, when the OSU success rate was 38 percent.

“Competition for research funding is increasing,” said Spinrad. “But we continue to hire talented research faculty with support from the Campaign for OSU. We’re creating new partnerships with businesses, agencies, foundations and universities and attracting students who want to make a difference. Patents, licensing agreements, startup companies – traditionally seen as indicators leading to future growth – are going in the right direction.”

Among companies signing licenses with Oregon State last year were three new startups: Applied Exergy (energy storage), Microflow CVO (chemical mixing) and CLJV (forest products). Since 2006, OSU has spun off 11 companies that have attracted more than $180 million in capital investment.

The university had its best month ever last September with more than $42 million in funding, led by its single largest grant for the year from the NSF. With an initial investment of $12 million, Oregon State partnered with the University of Oregon to establish the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry, which has labs and research teams on both campuses. Following discoveries that led to dramatic improvements in semiconductor performance and reductions in the use of toxic chemicals for production, that initiative has already spun off two startup businesses and generated more than a dozen patents.

Altogether, Oregon State’s largest grants in FY12 came from six federal agencies and one state agency for work in agriculture, chemistry, public health, cancer prevention, nutrition, environmental protection, alternative energy and marine resources. They include:

• $12 million for the sustainable materials chemistry center (National Science Foundation)
• $7 million for nutrition research and assistance (Oregon Department of Human Services)
• $3.9 million for research to address the growing threat of childhood obesity (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
• $3.7 million for research in support of coastal communities (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
• $3.4 million for a multi-agency ocean research program housed at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
• $2.9 million for the study of diet in cancer prevention (National Institutes of Health)
• $2.8 million for new ways to monitor air and water pollution by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and to protect human health (U.S. Public Health Service)
• $1.9 million to support ocean research through ship operations (National Science Foundation)
• $1.9 million to study methods for producing biofuels from woody debris (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
• $1.9 million for development of aquaculture methods in developing countries (U.S. Agency for International Development)

Private foundations provided a significant portion of Oregon State’s research funding. For example, grants from the Murdock Charitable Trust supported work in sustainable materials, ocean chemistry and biomedical research. A $450,000 Murdock grant enabled the College of Engineering to purchase a multi-chamber facility for testing the durability of new concrete mixtures, and additional funds support scientists working on seafloor processes and neurodegenerative diseases.

Other nonprofits such as the Agricultural Research Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Ford Family Foundation supported work on natural resources, coastal ecosystems and rural communities respectively. Such grants have provided critical seed funding for ideas that have led to major projects in areas such as ocean wave energy.

Rick Spinrad (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Oregon State’s vice president for research, Rick Spinrad, has been tapped to chair a federal committee on ocean observing systems. The 13 marine scientists, conservationists and industry stakeholders will advise the Integrated Ocean Observation System, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), on data collection, management and technological innovation.

As a former research leader at NOAA and the U.S. Navy, Spinrad brings a unique perspective to the task. In addition, Oregon State’s central role in the $386 million Ocean Observing Initiative funded by the National Science Foundation puts him on the front lines of the mission. A fleet of undersea gliders and an array of moored observation platforms are being deployed by the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

“Most people are familiar with the value of weather observations — radar, rain gauges, and so on — in improving forecasts,” Spinrad notes. “We have a need for a similarly robust set of ocean observations to support a broad range of needs including fisheries, shipping and transportation, national security and protection from natural hazards. This committee is a major step toward focusing federal efforts toward this goal.”

Riparian vegetation has adapted to disturbances and flooding fairly quickly in its recovery after the fire. (Photo: Jessica Halofsky).

The 2002 Biscuit Fire not only torched a half-million acres in Southern Oregon, it became a poster child for the debate over post-fire management and forest recovery. When the journal Science accepted a paper on the fire’s aftermath by then-graduate student Daniel Donato, it ignited a long-smoldering debate over what, if anything, should be done after fire scorches western forests. Stakeholders and commentators inside Oregon State and beyond — scientists, lawmakers, local officials, loggers, landowners, TV crews and newspaper reporters — weighed in on both ecology and academic freedom as the debate swirled around the Donato group’s work in 2006 (see “After the Fire,” Terra, Summer 2006.)

The controversy centered on salvage logging — the longtime practice of hauling out dead trees to use in lumber or other wood products. The Donato group’s paper suggested that burned-out stands might come back as strong when left alone to reseed naturally — a blow to the conventional wisdom that burnt forests regenerate best when logged and replanted.

“The Biscuit Fire has yielded several ecological surprises so far,” says Donato. “It ranks near the 1988 Yellowstone fires in expanding our knowledge of post-fire vegetation succession.”

A decade of new growth in the once-ravaged Siskiyou National Forest soon will generate more knowledge. Donato, now a post-doctoral researcher at Oregon State, is leading a follow-up study with funding from the Joint Fire Sciences Program (managed by the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Interior). The new study will look at the rates and patterns of post-fire vegetation growth, the effects of post-fire logging and the impact of subsequent burns.

“Large-scale fires are expected to become increasingly common throughout North America,” Donato notes. “We need long-term, scientific data to inform post-fire management options and outcomes.”

Chris Higgins, Oregon State engineer (Photo: Frank Miller)

Growing greenery on roofs brings many benefits. Buildings stay cooler, saving energy. Roofs last longer, saving money and materials. Birds and insects find new habitat, helping ecosystems. And green roofs make urban spaces more aesthetically and spiritually pleasing, as well as reducing heat-island effects for city dwellers.

But there are some costs that need to be considered, too. “Eco-roofs carry higher gravity loads and must support more moisture for longer periods than traditional roofs,” says Oregon State structural engineer Chris Higgins. “That changes the probabilities that need to be considered during design. In order to extract all the benefits of eco-roofs, we need to ensure their structural safety. That requires research.”

Photo courtesy of City of Portland

One big question: Are green roofs safe during earthquakes? Led by Higgins, engineers in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State are undertaking the first comprehensive study of the seismic performance of eco-roofs with funding from the National Science Foundation. Using a full-scale simulated eco-roof, they will investigate drainage characteristics, load distribution of water-saturated soils, long-term service performance and the behavior of different planting materials during lateral shaking. Their findings will guide the development of standards for eco-roofs in seismic zones.

A Home for Microbes?
Soil science on the Red Planet

Martin Fisk

When Martin Fisk talks about “looking at the scenery,” he’s not talking about the views from Cape Perpetua or Marys Peak. He’s talking about surveying the terrain on Mars.

The Oregon State marine geologist is part of a NASA research team viewing the Martian landscape through the camera lens aboard Curiosity, the rover that landed on the remote planet in August. Examining the photos being sent back to Earth, Fisk and his colleagues are looking for signs that Mars may once have been (or may still be) habitable. They will design daily experiments for Curiosity to carry out with its array of equipment, including a mass spectrometer that can analyze soil samples collected by the rover’s robotic arm.

The descent stage of the Mars Science Laboratory (Photo: NASA)

Fisk already has discovered life in seemingly inhospitable places. In 1998, he and his team found evidence of rock-eating microbes living a mile beneath the ocean floor. If the basic elements of life are present (carbon, phosphorous and nitrogen), only water is needed. “Under those conditions,” says Fisk, “microbes could live beneath any rocky planet.”

Light Wind and a Balmy Minus 10
Mars lander had help from Oregon State scientists

Jeff barnes

Landing a spacecraft on Mars may have little in common with basic aviation. But in one respect, at least, they’re alike — their dependence on weather.

As any frequent flyer knows, even the most sophisticated aircraft is subject to changes in the atmosphere. So when NASA began planning explorations on Mars, the agency needed not only rocket scientists and engineers, but also experts in the Martian atmosphere.

Enter Oregon State’s Jeffrey Barnes and Dan Tyler, researchers in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Their computer model uses detailed calculations to predict winds, temperatures and atmospheric density on the Red Planet — factors that were critical to the safe landing of the rover Curiosity this summer.

On August 6, temperatures ranged from a frigid minus 110 to a slightly less frigid minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit at the landing site. Winds blew at 10 mph near the surface. But it was dust that most worried the scientists.

“If the orbiter observes a dust storm forming near Gale Crater, there could be last-minute modifications to the onboard program,” Tyler said a few days before the touchdown. But no dust came, and the rover landed to raucous cheers in the NASA control room. Curiosity is roving. Hear Tyler interviewed on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Think Out Loud.”

Mars on Earth
Argentina provides geologists with Martian analog

Shan de Silva

Where do you go when you want to study the wind-driven landforms of Mars? To South America, of course.

In Argentina’s Puna region, Oregon State geologist Shan de Silva and a team of other researchers are looking for processes that parallel forces shaping the Red Planet. On the Puna Plateau, with its cold, dry, super-windy atmosphere, coarse gravel beds have been sculpted into vast, dune-like formations called “mega-ripples.” How, exactly, did the region’s howling winds shape those unique bedforms? With NASA funding, de Silva and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and the Smithsonian Institution have been working with researchers in Argentina to find out. Field investigations of the mega-ripples and sediment sampling for laboratory analysis are being combined with wind-tunnel experiments.

Puna Plateau, Argentina (Photo: Randy Marrett, University of Texas)

The discoveries could deepen scientists’ understanding of our most intriguing celestial neighbor. That’s because the Argentine gravels, whose weights are equivalent to those at Meridiani Planum on Mars, make Puna a promising analog. Topography and bedrock at Puna are similar to the Red Planet’s, as well.

“This science has direct relevance to the Mars Exploration Program that seeks to ‘understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world,’” says de Silva. “In particular, it impacts Goal 3 — to understand ‘how the relative roles of wind, water, volcanism, tectonics, cratering, and other processes have acted to modify the Martian surface.’”

Dinoflagellate Ceratium with star-shaped Acantharians in the background (Photo: Angelicque White)

During a Pacific Ocean research cruise, Angel White peers into her microscope. The ship rides gentle swells and sways side to side. In her field of view, organisms the size of dust motes rise and fall through their own watery world. “It can be disorienting and enthralling at the same time. The microbes are dying as I look at them, and it doesn’t always make for the best photos,” she says.

White studies plankton, the microorganisms that power the marine food chain, pump oxygen into the atmosphere and regulate global chemical cycles. In the course of her research, she has recorded an astonishing diversity of living shapes, forms, colors and patterns: spiny Radiolarians, fat copepods, football-shaped ostracods and coiled threads of Trichodesmium that coalesce into filamentous balls. Under fluorescent light, her photos reveal organisms within organisms, glowing constellations that rival images from the best space telescopes.

White’s science is strictly down to Earth. The assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences aims to reveal how plankton consume and release nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus and how, in turn, these abundant organisms respond to variations in temperature and water chemistry. Her tools run the gamut from high-tech instruments to old-school nets towed behind a ship. In the lab, her camera has become invaluable in her exploration of a world that is largely invisible to the naked eye.

Three isopods clutch one another (Photo: Angelicque White)

“Photography is a wonderful outlet for creativity and discovery,” she adds. “Plankton show an amazing array of different adaptations to their environment. If you concentrate them in a drop of ocean water and look through the microscope, you will see organisms feeding, swimming, gliding, tumbling and floating. There are blues and reds, jaws and antennae — whole alien worlds.”

Call to Artists

In 2012, 35 Oregon artists took up a call from The Arts Center of Corvallis for works based on White’s plankton images. Submissions came from painters, fabric and glass artists, sculptors, potters and an expert in the ancient Japanese art of stencil dyeing. They comprised a show, The Art of Plankton, Form Follows Function.

The range of art gave White a new view of a world that she has explored through her research. “I’ve been fortunate over the years to look through a microscope and be thrilled with the familiar and the mysterious,” she says. “And now to have a whole range of creative people re-envision what I saw the first time is very cool. The natural world can be astonishingly beautiful.

“The general view is that scientists pick it apart and explain it through cold and methodical equations. It is easy to get lost in the details and lose a sense of wonder. This collaboration — merging the perspectives and talents of artists with science — is refreshing. It reminds me what it was like that first time at sea, the first time I realized that, ‘oh no, really, the ocean teems with life, glorious tiny life.’ That sense of discovery is what I felt talking to the artists.”

Drifters 1, Leah Wilson, Eugene

Leviathan, Rakar West, Eugene

Parum Aqua Flora, Sidnee Snell, Corvallis

Emiliana Coccolithophore, Ella Rhoades, Corvallis

Drifters, Sara McCormick, Portland

Blue Button, Sandra Schock-Houtman, Corvallis

Tondos, Jenny Gray, Corvallis

Benthos, Jerri Bartholomew, Corvallis

The Collection, Chi Meredith, Corvallis

Artist statement — Sara McCormick.

My work is a form of digital art know as fractals: mathematical and natural forms that exhibit what’s known as self-similarity. Using a computer I render mathematical formulas into art of infinite depth and detail. More than anything else for me, my work represents a real, tangible connection to nature. The patterns I work with are the same patterns that make up the universe. When I create, I know that I am creating something that is both a part of myself, my physical body and the world as a whole. So much of this world can be described by these same simple patterns, so that when I create, I feel as if I am a part of evolution.

Portland, Oregon 2012

For other works submitted to the Art of Plankton show, see Forms from the Sea.

The Collection

Artist statement — Chi Meredith.

I am a professional artist and also a retired oceanography research assistant.

When asked to contribute to the da Vinci Days project, I anticipated making a two-dimensional oil painting of the beautiful photographs Dr. Angelicque White took of plankton gathered from the ocean.  However, while in North Carolina last winter, I saw a unique “bottle-holder” in a thrift shop and knew it would be perfect for this project.

Back home in Corvallis, I tried several objects that might fit in the sixteen spaces in the holder, and discovered that 250mL plastic Nalgene® bottles were a perfect fit.  I went to the lab where I used to work, and asked for some old bottles that were doomed to be recycled. The bottles had even possibly been used to sample water in places like Antarctica or the Indian Ocean or off the Oregon coast.

I painted the bottles and the holder with black spray paint, and then, using oil paints, I painted each bottle, inspired by the images from Dr. White’s website and from my own memories of many cruises.  I painted the holder with acrylic paints and filled the bottles with ground white coral.

The finished work symbolizes the science involved in the collection of samples for understanding life in our great oceans, as well as the art in the beauty of the microorganisms which are being studied.

Corvallis, Oregon 2012

For other works submitted to the Art of Plankton show, see Forms from the Sea.

Emiliania Coccolithophore — eukaryotic alga encased in calcium carbonate

Florisphaera profunda, a common coccolithophore

Radiolaria

Artist statement — Ella Rhoades.
I went literal in my interpretation of Angelicque White’s photographs. The imagery of life beneath the microscope lends itself so beautifully to mosaic form. Optical filters are remnants from the oceanographic industry and generated the color palette for this piece (Emiliana Coccolithophore). Aqua blues and greens feel right for such studies from the sea.

Corvallis, Oregon 2012

For other works submitted to the Art of Plankton show, see Forms from the Sea.

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 result is Parum Aqua Flora.

Corvallis, Oregon 2012

For other works submitted to the Art of Plankton show, see Forms from the Sea.

Leviathan

Artist statement — Rakar West.

All of Dr. White’s images of plankton are very beautiful and interesting to me. The one I chose as my main inspiration is the composite image of the cyanobacteria, protozoans and metazoans. My painting, Leviathan, refers to the food chain (or web), but is not a literal depiction. The word “leviathan” has come to mean any large sea creature, such as a whale. Both the whale (the large center shape) and plankton are part of the food web.

Eugene, Oregon 2012

For other works submitted to the Art of Plankton show, see Forms from the Sea.