The Vapor, built by Pulse Aerospace of Lakewood, Colorado, can fly as high as 15,000 feet and be flown autonomously or under the control of a ground-based pilot. In a trial run near Corvallis, Michael Wing used the unmanned aerial system to study imaging techniques in a search-and-rescue operation.
Faster, cheaper, better. The conventional wisdom says you can’t get all three at the same time. But researchers at Oregon State say otherwise — at least when it comes to new materials for making solar cells.
From satellites, balloons, high-altitude surveillance planes and even a two-seater Cessna, Oregon State scientists have been gathering data on the planet for nearly a half century. Their work has helped manage crops, detect threats to Western forests, track activity in Cascade volcanoes and reveal new details about ocean currents and how they interact with the atmosphere to affect global climate.
Last year, Oregon State University spent $4.8 million on electricity alone! It’s virtually impossible to know exactly how much of that is directly attributable to research, but rest assured, it’s a very large number. The same is true for all of the other categories of administrative, maintenance and infrastructural costs needed to keep the research enterprise running.
Methane-powered engines. Autonomous helicopters. Online shopping assistants. Electricity from wastewater. These new products and the business opportunities they generate are in the pipeline at Oregon State University’s Advantage Accelerator.
he Columbia River Basin comes to life in a new digital atlas produced by Oregon State University cartography students. They have created an iBook — accessible via Apple’s iPad — which combines the look and feel of a traditional paper book with the touch-screen features of a tablet computer.