OSU News Blog

Once again, Oregon is playing a significant role in the leadership of the NCAA.

As collegiate athletics’ governing body announced today, OSU President Ed Ray is the new chair of the NCAA Executive Committee; in that role, he’ll also chair the search for a replacement for the late Myles Brand, who died in September after a long battle with cancer.

NCAA watchers and Oregonians know well that Brand’s previous role was as president of the University of Oregon. His successor at the UO, Dave Frohnmayer, served on the NCAA Executive Committee during Brand’s leadership stint. The Beaver State has been well represented, indeed.

Through Ray, the NCAA search is certainly in capable hands. He is not only a respected economist, who served as provost and economics department head for years at The Ohio State University before coming to OSU in 2003, Ray is now the Oregon University System’s longest-serving current president. During tough economic times with no small amount of instability in the air, having an experienced hand providing leadership should serve the NCAA well.

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It’s hard to miss the quantity and quality of research stories coming out of OSU these days. The resulting media coverage is interesting not only for the stories highlighted, but for the high-impact visibility of the outlets in which they are published.

We’ve hit the venerable New York Times twice this week for OSU research on how climate change is affecting growth of Pacific Northwest trees in high-elevation areas and for OSU’s international leadership in the hottest new alternative energy area — ocean wave power. The latter was actually written by a Paris-based reporter (Lisa Pham) for the Times’ overseas publication, The International Herald-Tribune, and places OSU’s work alongside wave park projects under development in Portugal, Scotland, Australia and elsewhere, underscoring OSU’s impact as an international research university.

Los Angeles Times science writer Kim Murphy offered an interesting take on the PNW tree research, that it presents an upside of climate change.

The National Science Foundation Web site, where OSU enjoys regular prominence, features us today as its lead “Discoveries” feature, with a fascinating feature by OSU graduate student Mary Beth Oshnack on her research regarding building tsunami-resistant cities. The story is accompanied by four very cool videos of her “HouseSmash” project.

We haven’t forgotten the media closer to home, either. The Oregonian has turned to us for stories this week on OSU research of toxic algae blooms, which are thought to be growing around the state, and for my personal favorite, an account of a ferret that got H1N1 from its owner — perhaps first documented case of human-to-animal transmission anywhere.

Interesting reading, all. And it’s only Wednesday morning…

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A 12-foot great white shark that had the bad luck to get tangled recently in the ropes of a crab pot made a posthumous contribution to science last Thursday and Friday and became a media sensation in the process.

Researchers at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, the university’s Newport campus, performed a necropsy on the big guy over two days, televising much of the process via closed circuit to members of the media and public in an auditorium also at the Center. One might think carving up a dead fish wouldn’t be so appealing to news types, but when that creature is a relative of Jaws, the interest factor increases exponentially.

The Los Angeles Times wins points for most gruesome blog post related to the dissection display. Its coverage included a photo of the beast suspended in the bed of a pickup truck, its menacing teeth in full, frightening view. With the fish hung upside down, its length is even more impressive.

Eugene’s Register-Guard got in on the coverage, and an abbreviated version of its story popped up in other outlets, including Portland’s KGW.com, via AP.

Hatfield Marine Education Specialist William Hanshumaker, also an Oregon Sea Grant Extension faculty member, coordinated the necropsy, which included scientists from OSU as well as other institutions.  Dr. Brion Benninger of Oregon Health & Science Univesity’s Neurological Sciences Institute took part, for instance. Samples from the necropsy are being shared with Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, Monterey Bay Aquarium and others.

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In light of yesterday’s big Pacific quake and subsequent tsunami that left at least 100 dead in American Samoa and many more homeless,  OSU’s singular Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory is of hot interest to media today. It’s the world’s largest facility to model and study tsunamis, and many networks and other big media used it heavily to put in context the Indonesian tsunami of 2004.

Discovery Channel and CBS are among today’s visitors, and the news crew here are fielding more requests by the minute. The Hinsdale Lab is supported by the National Science Foundation — which only last week taped a story at the facility for its Science Nation show, debuting this fall on WETA in Washington, D.C. — as well as the Office of Naval Research.

Hinsdale recently installed a new wavemaker in the lab, one that focuses on hurricane-style waves. The first project with that intriguing new research capability is one that will look at waves and levees, a study supported by the Dept. of Homeland Security. Check out this vid in which the wavemaker smashes a concrete wall.

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At simultaneous media briefings this week in Portland and Corvallis, OSU released the remarkable news that it has surpassed a quarter-billion dollars in annual research funding, and that the research funding will almost certainly grow, significantly, this fiscal year.

Quite an accomplishment for Oregon’s only campus ranked in the top tier of national research universities by the Carnegie Foundation, especially when other PNW schools are seeing only modest growth or shrinkage in scientific contracts and grants. Outlets from OPB to the Oregonian to KGW and four other TV stations turned out to capture the news, as well as get info on a new deal with Intel that makes it easier for the computer giant to license innovations coming out of the OSU College of Engineering. The agreement puts OSU in select company among research universities that Intel works with in that way.

Check out coverage of the big day, including research funding totals from other Oregon campuses, at the Oregonian site, the Portland Business Journal, OPB or the Gazette-Times.

By the way, all of this was part of the public launch of the hugely popular Powered by Orange campaign — a celebration of OSU’s impact, both current and historic, on Oregon, its people and communities and the world beyond. Beavers flocked to events in Portland and Corvallis — including great after-hours parties at Jimmy Mak’s in the Pearl District and the venerable Squirrel’s in downtown Corvegas — to get in on the fun and learn about what’s new and exciting for Beaver Nation. Check out the site, where links to social media sites and cool downloads-a-plenty await.

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Lori Tobias of the Oregonian articulated in print what many have been whispering behind the scenes for some time now: The ascent of Oregon State University’s marine, oceanic, atmospheric and near-coastal science programs in recent years is transforming the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center and Newport, Ore., into the “Woods Hole of the West.”

That comparison might have seemed outlandish years ago — as Tobias notes, “Woods Hole is the largest nonprofit ocean research organization of its kind in the world.” But with OSU riding a wave of marine science accomplishments that includes recent announcements of a major new seafloor mapping project, a key role in the mammoth $386.4-million Ocean Observatories Initiative and helping to land the relocation of the NOAA Pacific Fleet from Seattle to Newport, folks seem to be getting more comfortable with such a characterization.

Fueling the upbeat feelings for Hatfield/Newport is the seemingly good possibility that Hatfield may be chosen for a new federally funded Marine Mammal/Marine Genomics Building. The work of OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute, already housed at Hatfield, is well known: Institute Director Bruce Mate was featured prominently earlier this year in a National Geographic Channel documentary on the blue whale, which last spring became the channel’s highest-rated documentary program ever. Colleagues Scott Baker and Markus Horning, like Mate, are developing international reputations for the excellence of their research and scholarship on whales, seals, genetics of marine mammals and more.

In describing the impact of Hatfield, Tobias summed it up nicely through the words of one of the faculty members working there:

“The amount of science here is mind boggling,” says Gil Sylvia, a marine resource economist and superintendent of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experimental Station. “It spans everything. Agencies here are studying where fish stocks are located in the ocean, how fish age and how that relates to their migration. We study oceanographic conditions and the relationship to fishery productivity. We are helping map the bottom of the ocean. We study underwater volcanoes and earthquakes.

“It’s huge and incredibly diverse, touching on everything from applied work to very, very fundamental science work.”

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OSU has been ranked in the third tier of the U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings of “America’s Best Colleges” report for years, and is once again this year. But exactly where we’re ranked is a bit of a mystery because U.S. News has traditionally only supplied numerical rankings for their top tier (really, a combination of the top 50 with a second tier that oddly has never been identified as such). Given the ubiquitous nature of the rankings and the obsessive way that media and those who work in higher education follow them, it’s always been frustrating not to know where our university stands.

Until now. Kind of.

In making the new rankings publicly available on its Web site yesterday,the magazine apparently unintentionally made numerical rankings and overall scores available for schools beyond the top tier. OSU ranked no. 137 out of 262 “national universities” in the report; OSU’s overall score was 31 (no easy way to explain that — for more information, visit usnews.com).

Other Pac 10 campus rankings ranged from Stanford (no. 4) to Arizona State (no. 121). Oregon tied for 115, down from 108 in last year’s report.

When we revisited the U.S. News site this morning, however, OSU’s rank and overall score had vanished. This put us in an awkward position, given that several media had already published stories on the ranking that now could no longer be corroborated on the U.S. News site.

A query to the magazine yielded this response from Robert J. Morse, director of data research: “The ‘compare report’ functionality was changed  this morning so a school’s numerical rank only shows up if it’s the top half of its category, otherwise only its tier shows up.” This apparently applies to overall scores, as well.

Not the answer we were hoping for, but, thankfully, we printed out yesterday’s results. For the record, all of the top 20 institutions in the U.S. News rankings are private, as are the bulk of the top 50. If one removes all private universities from the list, which have not suffered the deterioration in public funding that state universities have over the past three decades, OSU comes in at a much more respectable — and arguably more appropriately comparable — no. 71.

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No, we’re not talking about an episode of The Flintstones, but actual OSU Forestry research on mycrocrystalline cellulose — “a product that can be made easily from almost any type of plant fibers,” including trees, “to partially replace silica as a reinforcing filler in the manufacture of rubber tires.”

Yes, you read right: Tires made (in part, anyway) from wood.

A study from Associate Professor of Wood Science Kaichang Li suggests such tires might require less energy to produce, reduce costs, better resist heat buildup, have comparable traction on cold or wet pavement, be just as strong and provide higher fuel efficiency than traditional tires.

“We were surprised at how favorable the results were for the use of this material,” said Kaichang Li of  OSU’s College of Forestry, ranked No. 1 in North America. He conducted this research with graduate student Wen Bai. “This could lead to a new generation of automotive tire technology, one of the first fundamental changes to come around in a long time.”

Careful readers will recall that Li is the same guy who invented a type of wood adhesive modeled on the clinging power of ocean mussels that has none of the formaldehydes that make traditional adhesive so noxious. That innovation turned segments of the wood industry on their ear, as manufacturers scrambled to come up with a similarly environmentally friendly adhesive to compete with the company that smartly licensed Li’s work.

Read the whole fascinating story at http://bit.ly/45rrv. Or via our friends at The Oregonian: http://bit.ly/3V3rO.

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We taped this morning for “Brink,” the Science Channel’s hip/edgy/cool program on new and emerging scientific innovations. The subject: OSU chemical engineering Prof. Greg Rorrer’s research on diatoms — ancient, single-cell organisms that Rorrer is now using, incredibly, to dramatically increase the electrical output of solar cells.

Rorre’s novel use of biology rather than conventional semiconductor manufacturing processes caught the attention of the savvy producers at Brink, where host Josh Zepps (former host of Australian Idol Backstage, people!) guides “viewers through the unusual mix of science information and eureka moments” that make up the weekly program.

Look for the show on Aug. 3, and check your local cable listings for times to catch Brink both on the air date and in replays throughout the week.

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New research being released today by OSU and University of Washington faculty focuses on the first “statewide drug test,” performed by an examination of wastewater samples from 96 municipalities around Oregon. Scientists looked at prevalence of methamphetamine, MDMA or ecstasy and cocaine and found great variation from area to area.

The idea behind the work is to put more information in the hands of public health officials to provide more focus to efforts to prevent drug abuse and addiction. So far, the methodology behind the water sampling and analysis works like a charm, researchers say. Says one of the scientists, “Sewage doesn’t lie.”

Read/hear Northwest Public Radio Reporter Tom Banse’s account here.

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