Terra+ Winter 2015

A Hub For Health Sciences

Biomedical research takes on a towering presence in Portland.
Seen from Portland’s hilly Corbett district, the towers of the city’s new health sciences complex punch upward at optimistic angles from the South Waterfront.  The bridges to its north and south, the Ross Island and the Marquam, bracket the bluish stone-and-glass structure like a pair of parentheses. Read More

Seeking the Secrets of Old Growth
Oregon’s old-growth forests host thousands upon thousands of animal, plant and insect species: owls and beetles, mosses and ferns, salmon and salamanders, lichens and vines, spiders and songbirds, and trees that are older than the Aztecs and taller than Niagara Falls. Read More

Nuclear Sleuthing
“There’s still much too much material — nuclear, chemical, biological — being stored without enough protection. There are still terrorists and criminal gangs doing everything they can to get their hands on it.” Read More

A Greenhouse Gas Finds New Purpose
What if we could turn excess CO2 into a boon for electronics and other industries? Chemists and engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a way to do just that. Read More

Every day, breaking news from OSU researchers makes headlines around the world. Here’s a handful of recent examples:

Extroverted workers are judged harshly by their introverted colleagues, says business professor Keith Leavitt. See the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Butterflies’ eyespots can confuse and distract predators, biologist Katy Prudic found. See the London Times.

Laughing gas, a greenhouse gas known technically as nitrous oxide (N2O), contributed to warming at the end of the last ice age, Adrian Schilt and a team at OSU’s Ice Core Lab discovered. See Science News.

Watch this Space
In Portland’s towering, state-of-the-art Collaborative Life Sciences Building described above, Oregon State University scientists employ nanomedicine to discover new ways to treat tumors without chemotherapy. Watch for this story, along with articles on OSU research on infectious diseases, childhood obesity and healthy aging in our special report for the winter Terra, Oregon State’s award-winning research magazine, coming to this space in February.

Oregon State University is Oregon’s leading public research university, receiving $285 million in research funding for fiscal year 2014. Here we highlight a few of our most recent grant-funded projects:

Coral Coevolution
Principal Investigator: Rebecca Vega Thurber, Assistant Professor of Virology and Microbiology
The National Science Foundation has granted $1.1 million to Oregon State University to study the relationships between corals and their microbiota to inform efforts to better understand coral disease and preserve reef ecosystems.

The Hidden Fungus Conundrum
Principal Investigator: Joseph Spatafora, Professor of Botany and Plant Pathology
The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.2 million to Oregon State University to study an ancient but little-known group of fungi called Zygomycete.

Thin-Film Bottleneck
Principal Investigator: Chih-hung (Alex) Chang, Professor of Chemical Engineering
The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.5 million to Oregon State to address a bottleneck — high manufacturing costs — for large-volume production of thin-films.

TB Therapy
Principal Investigator: Luiz Bermudez, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology
The National Institutes of Health has awarded $182,000 to Oregon State to develop new therapies for battling antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis.