What runs through the life of author Norman McLean is a river. In the life of Elliott Finn, it’s a plant.
Category: Student Research
Siberia seldom tempts Western travelers to explore its vast taiga forests and endless permafrost — unless that traveler happens to be Allison Stringer. For the OSU biology student, nothing could be more enticing than spending a summer month “out in the middle of nowhere”— living on a barge at the Northeast Science Station near a tiny town called Chersky, discovering the long-buried bones of mammoths and ancient bison in the eroded banks of a nearby river, measuring tree rings with a high-powered microscope and recording carbon levels in soils to gauge the impact of climate change on Arctic ecosystems.
When manatees and alligators are members of your backyard ecosystem, it’s like living with a ready-made science project. Justin Conner took full advantage of the biodiversity bursting in and around the Florida canal that linked his childhood home to the ocean. There were peacock bass and cichlids to hook. There were frogs and toads to collect. There were black racers and corn snakes to stalk beneath the dense, tropical foliage.
Categories
An Evolutionary Tale
We know that mutations in DNA enable organisms to evolve. But how? Jeremy Northway, an undergraduate in the Oregon State University Honors College, is intent on using this worm, known as C. elegans, to find answers.
Categories
Nomads No More
Pressure from encroaching modernization threatens traditional patterns of migration and collaboration in Inner Mongolia. Tom Conte, master’s student in anthropology, traveled there to learn about impacts on the grasslands and Mongolian culture.
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.