Eyes in the Sky Autonomous Aircraft Take Flight, Mimic Nature

SPECIAL INSERT: 2013 Annual Report of Research

A world of research & creativity at Oregon State University • Fall 2013

Eyes in the Sky Autonomous aircraft take flight, mimic nature

An Elegant Matrix The environmental benefits of biochar

Through the Ice Diving in the world’s coldest ocean

Biological Origami and Naked Mole Rats Secrets to a long, healthy life Volume 9 Number 1 // oregonstate.edu/terra // Fall 2013 Oregon’s leading public research university

Features DEPARTMENTS

on a Wing and a Dare through the Ice sPIN ON RESEARCH 3 The Hidden Costs of Research 5 Oregon State researchers take remote sensing 24 While diving under Antarctic ice to study to new heights, engineering “unmanned aerial immense colonies of worms, an intrepid systems” that can fight forest fires, manage researcher also seeks secrets to deep-sea farm fields, monitor the environment and ecosystems and carbon sequestration. 4 PERSPECTIVES Research-Based Opinion locate missing hikers. The Economics of Carbon Reduction

singing His Story 22 studENT RESEARCH Preparing for the Future An Elegant Matrix Eco-Excellence 30 Graduate student Joshua Rist finds inspira- 12 In the Northwest, where tons of biomass rots tion in the “rhythm of life” as he develops his in forests or burns in slash piles, the conver- prodigious gifts as a composer. sion of waste into biochar is an environmental nEW TERRAIN Science on the Horizon and economic win-win. 34 An Iceberg Roars New Flu Clues Biological Origami and Naked End-of-Life Dilemmas Forests at Risk Where Growth Meets Decay 32 Mole Rats Uncovering the secrets to the extraordinary Hardwoods like curly soft maple can be 19 longevity of certain animal species could adorned with pigments made by fungi whose TERRABYTES What They’re Doing Now point the way to healthier aging for humans. 36 ecological role is, ironically, to decompose A Cheaper Cell wood. Deep Trouble Peak Water

ADVANTAGE FOR BUSINESS Oregon State Partners with Industry 37 Seedbed for Startups

On Dimple Hill near Corvallis, an unmanned Vapor helicopter takes off during a search-and-rescue exercise. See “On a Wing and a Dare,” Page 5. (Photo: Chris Becerra)

ii TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 1 Volume 9 Number 1 // oregonstate.edu/terra // Fall 2013 Oregon’s leading public research university

Features DEPARTMENTS

ADVANTAGE FOR BUSINESS Oregon State Partners with Industry 37 Seedbed for Startups

On Dimple Hill near Corvallis, an unmanned Vapor helicopter takes off during a search-and-rescue exercise. See “On a Wing and a Dare,” Page 5. (Photo: Chris Becerra)

ii TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 1 THE SPIN ON RESEARCH

President Edward J. Ray The Hidden Costs Vice President for University Relations and Marketing Drones (or Unmanned Aerial Systems) Steven Clark for the Rest of Us of Research Vice President for Research Richard Spinrad Editor If you mention the word “drone” in casual conversation, expect talk to turn to By Rick Spinrad, Vice President for Research Nicolas Houtman spying or the military. As I conducted research for this issue’s cover story and Associate Editor shared what I was learning, I encountered that reaction more than once. Lee Sherman So it’s not surprising that the makers of autonomous aircraft and associated Imagine for just a moment that you: 1) are independently wealthy; 2) are a genius; and 3) have a brilliant idea for a Contributing Writer William Jaeger products (motors, cameras, lightweight composite frames) prefer the awkward research project (for those readers who already satisfy all three criteria, please indulge me in a bit of editorial whimsy). term “unmanned aerial systems” or UAS. They’re preparing for rapid growth You begin your project with every intention of following the scientific method. You design the experiments, determine Art Director Amy Charron in the market once the Federal Aviation Administration sets the rules for oper- whom you need to hire, and start to build a budget. After accounting for the usual expenses (salaries, benefits, supplies, ating UAS in civilian air space in 2015. Designers travel, equipment), you realize there are some other things you’re just taking for granted. Teresa Hall, Long Lam, Heather Miller Companies such as PARADIGM (aka, Paradigm isr) in Bend, VDOS in Corvallis and Aerosight Innovations in Clackamas are advancing the devel- Photography Jeff Basinger, Chris Becerra, Karl Maasdam, opment of aerial systems in service to agriculture, natural resources, educa- You’ll need a place to conduct the research. It will have are required to charge the federal agency an additional 46 cents. Frank Miller tion, fire fighting and business. With due regard for regulations and privacy lights, heat, water, sewer and so forth. You realize that the And our rate is quite low. Some institutions charge more than Illustration concerns, Oregon State researchers and students are in the thick of this facility will be insured against unforeseen circumstances. And 100 percent for overhead. These rates are renegotiated every few Teresa Hall, Chris Hunter, Long Lam, of course someone will do maintenance — mow the lawn, clean years and are based on how much was spent previously. Heather Miller creative enterprise. UAS are hardly the first military technologies to find uses off the battle- the windows, repair the stairs. You suddenly see that for every Just for reference, OSU’s rate 30 years ago was 31 percent. Oregon State is Oregon’s leading public field. We can thank the Department of Defense (DOD) for radar that guides air precious dollar that you’ve budgeted directly for research, you Some sponsors insist on lower overhead rates — a challenge, research university with more than $263 need another big chunk of change just to keep the operation since those electric bills and maintenance charges still have to be million in research funding in FY2013. traffic, GPS on our mobile phones and, of course, the Internet. running. Since you’re independently wealthy, however, you just paid by someone. It can get very complicated very quickly. Classified by the Carnegie Foundation for A quick scan of current research under way in the DOD’s Defense Sciences the Advancement of Teaching in its top bite the bullet and dig a bit deeper into your pocket. The costs of doing research are high and continue to increase. category (very high research activity), Office turns up these gems: Now imagine you’re a university researcher and also a genius The supplemental costs of supporting that research are also Oregon State is one of only two American »» “Fracture putty,” a material that could be packed in and around compound universities to hold the Land-, Sea-, Sun- with a brilliant idea. The situation is no different, except now you rising. See the 2013 Annual Report of Research in this issue of and Space-Grant designations. OSU com- fractures to spur bone healing and reduce rehabilitation time need to find a fair way to convince someone else to support your Terra for a breakdown of our research operations. And keep in prises 11 academic colleges with strengths »» “REMIND” (Restorative Encoding Memory Integration Neural Device), a in Earth systems, health, entrepreneurship work and pay the costs of the project: the “overhead.” And those mind, that unless you are an independently wealthy genius, you and the arts and sciences. type of neural prosthesis that can assist with memory recovery costs mount up. need to know the true costs of supporting research. » Terra is published by University Relations » “BOLT” (Broad Operational Language Translation), a real-time language For example, consider one of our successful endeavors, the and Marketing. It is printed by a Forest translation device that could enable fluid conversation between speakers of Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry, led by Oregon State Stewardship Council certified printer with different languages vegetable-based inks on paper with 55% professors Doug Keszler and John Wager. It was recently awarded Overhead 30 years ago recycled content (30% post-consumer). At Oregon State, the DOD supports research on the oceans, human cogni- a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation. This Send address corrections to: tion, microbial fuel cells and micro air vehicles. While the military has a clear research will provide new understanding and novel materials Ashley Fuszek, University Marketing need for science to protect our security, the results may also appear in hospi- for use in a wide range of products, such as commercial elec- 102 Adams Hall Oregon State University, tals, on our phones and in our skies. tronics and health-care equipment. But by standard negotiation Corvallis, OR 97331 [email protected] with the federal government, no less than $2,479,359 will go to 541.737.3871 Nick Houtman “overhead.” Contact Nicolas Houtman at: Editor Last year, Oregon State University spent $4.8 million on elec- 402 Kerr Administration Building Oregon State University tricity alone! It’s virtually impossible to know exactly how much Corvallis, OR 97331 of that is directly attributable to research, but rest assured, it’s a [email protected] 541.737.0783 very large number. The same is true for all of the other categories of administrative, maintenance and infrastructural costs needed Member Overhead today to keep the research enterprise running. Member University Research Magazine Association Today, we have an officially negotiated federal overhead rate of 46 percent. That is, for every dollar of modified direct costs — salaries, benefits, supplies and equipment, minus major equip- Follow Terra on Facebook and Twitter ment purchases and agreements with other universities — we facebook.com/terraOSU twitter.com/terraOSU

On the cover: Illustration by Chris Hunter

2 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 3 THE SPIN ON RESEARCH

On the cover: Illustration by Chris Hunter

2 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 3 PERSPECTIVES // Research-Based Opinion

The Economics of Carbon Reduction Climate change policy and normative science ON A WING By William K. Jaeger, Professor, Department of Applied Economics

To influence policy, research 3. Less encouragingly, current U.S. policy promotes biofuels on climate change must under the Renewable Fuel Standards. Research finds that these incorporate many dis- programs are extremely costly and would reduce net U.S. petro- ciplines and bridge the leum use by less than 2 percent. A carbon tax could achieve 20 AND A DARE divide between the natural times as much for the same cost. Moreover, the estimated indi- and social sciences. I see rect effects of biofuel production on land use actually suggests a similarities and important net increase in global carbon emissions. differences in the way that Research in the natural sciences and in economics also differs Pilotless aircraft monitor the environment research is done in the in important ways. In particular, economics includes both “posi- environmental sciences and tive” (descriptive) and “normative” (value-based) analyses. By Nick Houtman in economics. One similarity Although this appears to contradict Robert Lackey’s warning is that, like climate science, that normative science is “a corruption of science and should economics research on climate change has been misrepresented not be tolerated” (Terra Blog, January 23, 2013), we are talking in ways that resemble the arguments of “climate deniers.” For about different things. Normative economics tries to represent example, the public has heard claims that cap-and-trade (a society’s values based on established theory and methods — not program that combines emissions limits with permits that can researcher biases. These theories and methods, with underpin- be traded in an open market) will crash the economy and that nings from philosophy and elsewhere, can be controversial and a carbon tax would just grow the government. But a look at need careful qualification. But the aim is sound: to represent recent economic research on people’s values, including “non- climate policy is instructive. Some use values” and concern for future highlights: “The public has heard claims that generations. 1. The power of a carbon tax cap-and-trade will crash the Understandably, natural scien- stems from the way it perme- tists often seek ways to connect ates the entire economy: prices economy and that a carbon tax their research to important social of energy-intensive goods rise in and policy questions. At times, such proportion to their carbon release, would just grow the government.” efforts can lead to the temptations consumers and producers adjust that Lackey warns about or, in some their choices, new incentives spur technological innovations. By cases, to ad hoc substitutes that bypass prevailing social science distributing the burden broadly, a carbon tax minimizes the cost. research. In fact, economics can often provide ways to make Indeed, estimates suggest carbon tax policies would slow growth connections between descriptive, positive science and public by a mere 0.06 percent. Moreover, if the revenues are used to policy. finance reductions in pre-existing income taxes, that additional The climate policy research cited above required just this type benefit, or “double dividend,” would lower costs even more and of integration, as have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate prevent growth in government. Change (IPCC) assessments. Today’s research on “coupled 2. Cap-and-trade has the efficiency of a carbon tax but offers natural-human systems” has the potential to integrate the more certainty about emissions limits. Indeed, Europe’s Emis- relevant natural and social sciences in ways that produce output sions Trading System (ETS) has locked-in mandatory reductions about costs, benefits, risk, equity and ecosystem impacts, in the cap that will reduce emissions from 1990 levels by 70 which can be used to develop effective public policies. Indeed, percent in 2050. Economies around the world are implementing normative economics, in appropriate combination with other programs like the ETS, representing about one-third of global social and natural sciences, represents the most direct scholarly gross domestic product. channel through which multidisciplinary research can speak to policymakers.

4 TERRA » FALL 2013 PERSPECTIVES // Research-Based Opinion

The Economics of Carbon Reduction Climate change policy and normative science ON A WING By William K. Jaeger, Professor, Department of Applied Economics

4 TERRA » FALL 2013 n a warm afternoon last summer foot in the steep terrain, a rescue team The results showed that aerial Oregon has been recognized for new aircraft with lightweight carbon devices can effectively assist in an more than a decade as a hotbed of composites, sensors and flexible in the hills west of Corvallis, three launched an unmanned aerial vehicle, emergency. While concerns over UAS development, says Belinda membranes. Oregon State University students the suitcase-sized Vapor made by Pulse privacy have driven much of the Batten, Oregon State engineering Researchers hope to grow an recent public debate in Oregon professor and a former program industry that developed largely for wentO hiking in the McDonald-Dunn Aerospace of Lakewood, Colorado. With and elsewhere, such machines are officer for the Air Force Office of military applications and already Forest when they became “lost.” A few all the whoosh and whir of an electric proving their worth in fighting forest Scientific Research. That reputa- employs more than 400 people in fires, managing farm fields and tion began with Insitu, a company Oregon. It has an annual statewide scattered belongings — a backpack, lawnmower, it hovered over the hills, monitoring the environment. Most in the Columbia River Gorge. “Insitu economic impact estimated at $81 shoes, a shirt — marked their trail in an took thermal-infrared and visible-light people call them drones. Insiders is one of the global leaders in these million, according to the Associa- call them unmanned aerial systems autonomous vehicles,” says Batten. tion for Unmanned Vehicle Systems emergency response exercise. Rather photos and sent back a video stream to a (UAS). In any case, they are likely to “Because of them being where they International, AUVSI. than send out a full-scale operation on laptop in an SUV parked in a clearing. transform our use of the skies in the are, there’s an entire supply chain Michael Wing, the appropriately near future. in the Hood River area: component named OSU coordinator of the pieces, the avionics, cameras, auto- research consortium, is developing pilots. The motors are being made cooperative UAS research proj- at Northwest UAV in McMinnville.” ects with two Oregon companies: Additional UAS companies are Portland-based HoneyComb Corp., located in Central Oregon, including which designs systems for agricul- Kawak Aviation Technologies and ture and natural resource manage- PARADIGM. ment; and VDOS LLC of Corvallis, Commercial UAS flights are which focuses on the environmental, currently illegal, but the Federal military and humanitarian applica- Aviation Administration allows tions of UAS. research testing with a permit, “For HoneyComb, partnering with known as a Certificate of Authority. OSU means that we have the support PARADIGM, a Bend startup, of research programs operating has arranged for FAA approvals under authority of the FAA,” says and facilitated projects for OSU, Ryan Jenson, CEO and co-founder. including the search-and-rescue VDOS conducts manned and operation in the McDonald-Dunn unmanned aerial flights in Alaska Forest and a summer-long analysis of and other parts of the Pacific Rim, potato fields in Hermiston. says Seth Johnson, the company’s Now, as the federal government UAS manager who anticipates plans to open the nation’s airspace to collaborating on technology and planes without a live pilot onboard educational opportunities such as — whether operated by software or student internships. a person in a distant control station Northwest UAV has already — Oregon State is partnering with embarked on research with OSU businesses, economic development aimed at increasing the fuel effi- organizations and state govern- ciency of its UAS motors, and at ment to create an Unmanned Vehicle least one new business has emerged System Research Consortium. OSU from the university through the scientists, engineers and students Oregon State Advantage Accel- are testing UAS over potato fields, erator program. Michael Williams, vineyards, forests, beaches and a junior in the College of Business, ocean waters. Inspired by bat wings has created Multicopter Northwest and butterflies, they are designing to market his aerial platform to professional photographers and film- (Previous page) The Vapor, built by Pulse Aero- makers. space of Lakewood, Colorado, can fly as high as 15,000 feet and be flown autonomously or Affordability under the control of a ground-based pilot. (Left) In July 2013, Michael Wing coordinated While the technology grows in a search-and-rescue operation on Dimple Hill capabilities and cost, Oregon State’s west of Corvallis. (Photos: Chris Becerra)

6 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 7 n a warm afternoon last summer foot in the steep terrain, a rescue team The results showed that aerial Oregon has been recognized for new aircraft with lightweight carbon devices can effectively assist in an more than a decade as a hotbed of composites, sensors and flexible in the hills west of Corvallis, three launched an unmanned aerial vehicle, emergency. While concerns over UAS development, says Belinda membranes. Oregon State University students the suitcase-sized Vapor made by Pulse privacy have driven much of the Batten, Oregon State engineering Researchers hope to grow an recent public debate in Oregon professor and a former program industry that developed largely for wentO hiking in the McDonald-Dunn Aerospace of Lakewood, Colorado. With and elsewhere, such machines are officer for the Air Force Office of military applications and already Forest when they became “lost.” A few all the whoosh and whir of an electric proving their worth in fighting forest Scientific Research. That reputa- employs more than 400 people in fires, managing farm fields and tion began with Insitu, a company Oregon. It has an annual statewide scattered belongings — a backpack, lawnmower, it hovered over the hills, monitoring the environment. Most in the Columbia River Gorge. “Insitu economic impact estimated at $81 shoes, a shirt — marked their trail in an took thermal-infrared and visible-light people call them drones. Insiders is one of the global leaders in these million, according to the Associa- call them unmanned aerial systems autonomous vehicles,” says Batten. tion for Unmanned Vehicle Systems emergency response exercise. Rather photos and sent back a video stream to a (UAS). In any case, they are likely to “Because of them being where they International, AUVSI. than send out a full-scale operation on laptop in an SUV parked in a clearing. transform our use of the skies in the are, there’s an entire supply chain Michael Wing, the appropriately near future. in the Hood River area: component named OSU coordinator of the pieces, the avionics, cameras, auto- research consortium, is developing pilots. The motors are being made cooperative UAS research proj- at Northwest UAV in McMinnville.” ects with two Oregon companies: Additional UAS companies are Portland-based HoneyComb Corp., located in Central Oregon, including which designs systems for agricul- Kawak Aviation Technologies and ture and natural resource manage- PARADIGM. ment; and VDOS LLC of Corvallis, Commercial UAS flights are which focuses on the environmental, currently illegal, but the Federal military and humanitarian applica- Aviation Administration allows tions of UAS. research testing with a permit, “For HoneyComb, partnering with known as a Certificate of Authority. OSU means that we have the support PARADIGM, a Bend startup, of research programs operating has arranged for FAA approvals under authority of the FAA,” says and facilitated projects for OSU, Ryan Jenson, CEO and co-founder. including the search-and-rescue VDOS conducts manned and operation in the McDonald-Dunn unmanned aerial flights in Alaska Forest and a summer-long analysis of and other parts of the Pacific Rim, potato fields in Hermiston. says Seth Johnson, the company’s Now, as the federal government UAS manager who anticipates plans to open the nation’s airspace to collaborating on technology and planes without a live pilot onboard educational opportunities such as — whether operated by software or student internships. a person in a distant control station Northwest UAV has already — Oregon State is partnering with embarked on research with OSU businesses, economic development aimed at increasing the fuel effi- organizations and state govern- ciency of its UAS motors, and at ment to create an Unmanned Vehicle least one new business has emerged System Research Consortium. OSU from the university through the scientists, engineers and students Oregon State Advantage Accel- are testing UAS over potato fields, erator program. Michael Williams, vineyards, forests, beaches and a junior in the College of Business, ocean waters. Inspired by bat wings has created Multicopter Northwest and butterflies, they are designing to market his aerial platform to professional photographers and film- (Previous page) The Vapor, built by Pulse Aero- makers. space of Lakewood, Colorado, can fly as high as 15,000 feet and be flown autonomously or Affordability under the control of a ground-based pilot. (Left) In July 2013, Michael Wing coordinated While the technology grows in a search-and-rescue operation on Dimple Hill capabilities and cost, Oregon State’s west of Corvallis. (Photos: Chris Becerra)

6 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 7 Seeing the Planet

OSU’s “remote sensing” story

Aerial Information Systems Lab in Oregon. At the same time, it on wildfires and enter disaster zones plant and across the field, says Phil Hamm, HAREC rom satellites, balloons, high-altitude surveillance aims to demonstrate that powerful approved a $900,000 shot-in-the- where humans would be at risk director. “The key is to pick up plants that are just begin- Fplanes and even a two-seater Cessna, Oregon State robotic planes can be affordable. arm to the Oregon Innovation (think of the damaged Fukushima ning to show stress so you can find a solution quickly, scientists have been gathering data on the planet for “Unmanned aerial systems are Council for a new Unmanned Aerial nuclear plant). They may also carry so the grower doesn’t have any reduced yield or quality nearly a half century. Their work has helped manage now becoming available at prices Systems Enterprise center in Bend. much of the nation’s airborne cargo. issues,” he said in an OSU news release last spring. crops, detect threats to Western forests, track activity well below $2,000,” says Wing, the Rick Spinrad, OSU vice president for Farmers across the country have used aerial photos for in Cascade volcanoes and reveal new details about lab’s director, an expert in remote research, chairs the board for the Eyes on Potatoes crop management for many years, but UAS could provide ocean currents and how they interact with the atmo- sensing and an assistant professor new center. OSU researchers are already helping more detail at lower cost. “If I’m farming, I’m not inter- sphere to affect global climate. in the College of Forestry. “Coupled “This is going to be a billion dollar to lay the groundwork for this vision ested in the healthy plants,” adds Hamm. “I need to use Researchers have a term for such long-distance with light-weight sensors, UAS are industry,” says Mitch Swecker, by testing commercial UAS across that imagery to see where the problems are.” capable of capturing high-resolution director of the Oregon Aviation the state’s diverse terrain. Higher resolution is the key, says Don Horneck, OSU observation: “remote sensing.” With funding from imagery that can support natural Department. “One of the governor’s In Eastern Oregon, at the Herm- Extension agronomist. “You can fly the UAVs (unmanned NASA, Professor Charles Poulton established OSU’s first resource management, disaster priorities is jobs and innovation, and iston Agricultural Research and aerial vehicles) low enough that you can get 1 millimeter center, the Environmental Remote Sensing Applications response and search-and-rescue as a state agency, one of our priori- Extension Center (HAREC) and over resolution, and you can actually look at an individual leaf Laboratory (ERSAL), in 1972. operations. ties is to help promote economic nearby private farmland, agrono- in the field,” he told the online magazine PrecisionAg. By repeatedly capturing images of forested and “What’s new and exciting is the development.” To advance that goal, mists are collecting data from two agricultural landscapes, scientists detect trends in flexibility of flights and the ability the state and OSU have joined with systems: the Unicorn, a delta-wing Pests in the Vineyard plant stress, disease and forest composition, says Barry to get close to the ground with our Alaska and Hawaii in a proposal to shaped plane from Procerus Tech- In late summer, as the days get cooler, wine grapes get Schrumpf, former director of ERSAL. higher-end sensors. If we have an the Federal Aviation Administration nologies in Utah; and the Hawkeye sweeter, and the harvest in Oregon’s vineyards launches “OSU was a pioneer partly because Oregon has such object that is an inch-and-a-half (FAA) to create a national UAS test made by California-based Tetracam, into high gear. But humans are not the only ones watching a wide range of terrain in a small area: rainforests, high across (about the size of a golf ball), site. In a related but separate effort, which uses a type of parachute the crop with an eagle eye. In some years, birds (robins, desert, mountains, agricultural valleys,” says Chuck we could tell its location. That’s a Oregon State has joined a national known as a paraglider. These starlings, crows) cause extensive damage as they feast on Rosenfeld, geoscientist and professor emeritus. Rosen- pretty fine level of detail.” coalition of 12 universities to coor- machines fly different kinds of aerial the ripening fruit. In the lab, Wing and a team of dinate a multidisciplinary research patterns and are equipped with Vineyard managers take a variety of countermeasures. feld flew his Cessna to take thermal infrared and visible grad students assemble planes with program. OSU’s focus, says Wing, infrared and visible-light cameras, They install nets, fire shotgun blasts and flash laser lights. light photos of the Oregon coast and Cascade volcanoes, off-the-shelf components: a Zephyr would be environmental monitoring. enabling researchers to determine Despite their efforts, about 65 percent of the state’s vine- including Mount St. Helens after it erupted. Professors II delta-wing (a plane composed If these initiatives succeed, UAS which arrangements collect field yards lost up to 11 percent of their crops in 2010 and 2011. Bill Ripple and Michael Wing in the College of Forestry entirely of a wing-shaped struc- will routinely help manage farm data most effectively. What if UAS could deter the birds, save grapes, reduce continue to manage ERSAL. ture) made of rigid foam, painted fields, survey wildlife, provide Disease, moisture and growth labor costs and lower the neighbors’ stress? In 2011, two Scientists in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Beaver orange and measuring nearly up-to-the-minute progress reports problems can vary from plant to OSU alumni, Dick Evans (‘69 Engineering) and Gretchen Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) have helped to shape the five feet from wingtip to wingtip; a Evans (‘69 Elementary Education) sponsored an engi- global remote sensing enterprise. Since the early 1980s, Canon point-and-shoot camera; an neering project to answer that question. They own a vine- they have designed satellite sensors and developed autopilot the size of a credit card; an yard in the hills west of Junction City. With guidance from analytical techniques for interpreting ocean data. Their 11.1-volt lithium-polymer battery. John Parmigiani, OSU mechanical engineer, two student precise measurements of surface waters have identi- He has flown these machines over teams came up with different approaches. One designed fied currents that set the stage for fisheries, marine the Oregon State campus and even an aircraft to deploy reflective streamers and laser lights. demonstrated one to a UAS confer- The other developed a plane inspired by the birds’ natural mammals and other aspects of near-shore ecosystems. ence in Turkey, hosted by an Oregon fear of predators. It mimics the look and behavior of a CEOAS is also home to one of only two non-commer- State alumnus, Abdullah Akay (‘98 Cooper’s hawk, a skillful flier whose dark cap and long, cial direct-broadcast satellite stations on the West master’s and ‘03 Ph.D. in Forest thin, rounded tail distinguish it from other hawks. Coast. It serves fishermen, the U.S. Coast Guard, search- Engineering). In the fall of 2012, the students tested their planes in the and-rescue teams and other agencies by downloading Last summer, concerns over Evans’ vineyard. Members of each team stood watch at data directly from satellite color sensors and providing privacy led the Legislature to the corners to record pest birds flying into and out of the regional ocean, land and atmospheric information in establish new standards for UAS vineyard. As they launched their airplanes, the students near-real time. captured the scene on video to document how well their UAS worked. Roberto Albertani’s innovative wing designs incorporate flexible membranes that help control flight. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

8 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 9 Seeing the Planet

OSU’s “remote sensing” story

8 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 9 As often happens in research, the that you can hold in the palm of that we can build,” Albertani says, results were inconclusive. “To make your hand. Such fliers could respond “something that can be manufac- a long story short,” says Parmigiani, to disasters inside buildings or tured in large numbers.” “it wasn’t a bad year for birds. We got collect data under tree canopies. To Albertani, an expert in composite some action but not nearly as much design them, the OSU mechanical materials, co-holds two patents for as the year before. Based on our data, engineer studies how they interact micro air vehicles. He demonstrates you couldn’t conclude that firing off with the air. And for that, he relies one of them by taking a sleek, black shotguns worked either. It appears on a common cooking ingredient: airplane off the top of a filing cabinet that at a certain time in the morning, olive oil. and wrapping the wings under the the birds just stopped being active.” In a room the size of a walk-in fuselage into a package you could put Not to be deterred, Parmigiani closet, he sprays a fine oil mist into in your coat pocket. Take it out, and and the Evanses decided to give the the air. At the same time, air blows the wings snap back into position, students’ designs another chance. out of a device that looks like a hair ready to fly. They are planning a broader study dryer and moves over and under Equipped with a video camera, with more vineyards, contrasting a test aircraft anchored to a plat- such a plane could fly over nearby the UAS and other approaches to form. The air may be invisible, but terrain and relay images back to the reducing the loss of grapes. lasers illuminate the airborne olive sender. “If you’re fighting a fire in oil particles, telling the researcher the forest, you could throw this into Bat Wings and Butterflies where the air speeds up or eddies the air and get a look at everything Light-as-a-feather, fiber-reinforced as it moves across the wings. High- around you,” he says. carbon composites give Roberto speed cameras capture the action at To understand how micro air Albertani an edge in designing 500 frames per second. vehicles should be designed, Alber- unusual aircraft: micro air vehicles “Ultimately we design something tani looks to nature — in this case, changes. Moreover, the cells are linked to muscles that Roberto Albertani adjusts an experimental wing to understand how it bat wings. He picks up another plane course through the wing. The result of this natural design interacts with air blown over its surface. (Photo: Jeff Basinger) about the size of a coffee cup. In the — a system that engineers call “co-located actuators and middle of its slick carbon-fiber wing sensors” — is familiar to anyone who has marveled at bats surface sits a thin latex skin like a as they dart after insects at dusk. Without the familiar do more than transport people and cargo. UAS can lower patch over a hole. As air moves over control structures we see on airplanes, bats’ flexible risks to fire fighters, reduce the cost of collecting data on the wing, he explains, the latex can membrane wings demonstrate dramatic agility. wildlife and natural resources and help find lost hikers in flex to add lift and maneuverability. Albertani is also studying the flight behavior of butter- the woods. The idea came from Peter Ifju, a flies. “Butterflies are incredibly interesting fliers,” he OSU researchers are already using them to gather envi- windsurfer and Albertani’s Ph.D. says. “They have low wing loading, which means they are ronmental data. Geophysicist Rob Holman has flown UAS adviser at the University of Florida. very light and have a high wing surface. It makes the flier for beach monitoring and measurement, and Christoph In a separate project, Oregon State intrinsically slow. Nevertheless, they can dash fast and are Thomas, a professor of atmospheric sciences, plans to use students worked with Belinda Batten very agile. They can maneuver in small spaces.” an “Oktocopter” (a UAV powered by eight rotor blades) in to understand how bats control Albertani continues to develop his designs and to test the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. flight through cells on their wings. them in OSU’s wind tunnel. He also advises the student However, before UAS become more common in our With funding from the Air Force chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and skies, social and technical problems remain to be solved. Office of Scientific Research, they Astronautics, which competes in an annual DBF (design, “If there is one lesson that can be gleaned from this used engineering principles to show build, fly) competition. nation’s aeronautic history,” says Wing, “It is that these that some cells sense air-pressure difficult challenges can only be answered by facilitating More Than Transportation increased research and innovation in the burgeoning UAS Barely a century after the Wright Brothers learned how industry.” Air currents swirl through laser light as they move over an experimental wing. Roberto to control flight, the technology that has given us access Albertani uses olive oil particles to reveal air to the heavens is now becoming smaller, less expensive movement. (Photo: Jeff Basinger) and combined with sensors and software that enable it to

10 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 11 As often happens in research, the that you can hold in the palm of that we can build,” Albertani says, results were inconclusive. “To make your hand. Such fliers could respond “something that can be manufac- a long story short,” says Parmigiani, to disasters inside buildings or tured in large numbers.” “it wasn’t a bad year for birds. We got collect data under tree canopies. To Albertani, an expert in composite some action but not nearly as much design them, the OSU mechanical materials, co-holds two patents for as the year before. Based on our data, engineer studies how they interact micro air vehicles. He demonstrates you couldn’t conclude that firing off with the air. And for that, he relies one of them by taking a sleek, black shotguns worked either. It appears on a common cooking ingredient: airplane off the top of a filing cabinet that at a certain time in the morning, olive oil. and wrapping the wings under the the birds just stopped being active.” In a room the size of a walk-in fuselage into a package you could put Not to be deterred, Parmigiani closet, he sprays a fine oil mist into in your coat pocket. Take it out, and and the Evanses decided to give the the air. At the same time, air blows the wings snap back into position, students’ designs another chance. out of a device that looks like a hair ready to fly. They are planning a broader study dryer and moves over and under Equipped with a video camera, with more vineyards, contrasting a test aircraft anchored to a plat- such a plane could fly over nearby the UAS and other approaches to form. The air may be invisible, but terrain and relay images back to the reducing the loss of grapes. lasers illuminate the airborne olive sender. “If you’re fighting a fire in oil particles, telling the researcher the forest, you could throw this into Bat Wings and Butterflies where the air speeds up or eddies the air and get a look at everything Light-as-a-feather, fiber-reinforced as it moves across the wings. High- around you,” he says. carbon composites give Roberto speed cameras capture the action at To understand how micro air Albertani an edge in designing 500 frames per second. vehicles should be designed, Alber- unusual aircraft: micro air vehicles “Ultimately we design something tani looks to nature — in this case, changes. Moreover, the cells are linked to muscles that Roberto Albertani adjusts an experimental wing to understand how it bat wings. He picks up another plane course through the wing. The result of this natural design interacts with air blown over its surface. (Photo: Jeff Basinger) about the size of a coffee cup. In the — a system that engineers call “co-located actuators and middle of its slick carbon-fiber wing sensors” — is familiar to anyone who has marveled at bats surface sits a thin latex skin like a as they dart after insects at dusk. Without the familiar do more than transport people and cargo. UAS can lower patch over a hole. As air moves over control structures we see on airplanes, bats’ flexible risks to fire fighters, reduce the cost of collecting data on the wing, he explains, the latex can membrane wings demonstrate dramatic agility. wildlife and natural resources and help find lost hikers in flex to add lift and maneuverability. Albertani is also studying the flight behavior of butter- the woods. The idea came from Peter Ifju, a flies. “Butterflies are incredibly interesting fliers,” he OSU researchers are already using them to gather envi- windsurfer and Albertani’s Ph.D. says. “They have low wing loading, which means they are ronmental data. Geophysicist Rob Holman has flown UAS adviser at the University of Florida. very light and have a high wing surface. It makes the flier for beach monitoring and measurement, and Christoph In a separate project, Oregon State intrinsically slow. Nevertheless, they can dash fast and are Thomas, a professor of atmospheric sciences, plans to use students worked with Belinda Batten very agile. They can maneuver in small spaces.” an “Oktocopter” (a UAV powered by eight rotor blades) in to understand how bats control Albertani continues to develop his designs and to test the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. flight through cells on their wings. them in OSU’s wind tunnel. He also advises the student However, before UAS become more common in our With funding from the Air Force chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and skies, social and technical problems remain to be solved. Office of Scientific Research, they Astronautics, which competes in an annual DBF (design, “If there is one lesson that can be gleaned from this used engineering principles to show build, fly) competition. nation’s aeronautic history,” says Wing, “It is that these that some cells sense air-pressure difficult challenges can only be answered by facilitating More Than Transportation increased research and innovation in the burgeoning UAS Barely a century after the Wright Brothers learned how industry.” Air currents swirl through laser light as they move over an experimental wing. Roberto to control flight, the technology that has given us access Albertani uses olive oil particles to reveal air to the heavens is now becoming smaller, less expensive movement. (Photo: Jeff Basinger) and combined with sensors and software that enable it to

10 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 11 An Elegant MATRIX Woody waste finds new markets in biochar By Lee Sherman

his story begins with an entrepreneur — a citizen scientist Tliving in the timber town of Philomath, an outdoorsman, fish- erman and organic farmer of Dutch and Blackfeet ancestry who’s hell- bent on healing an ailing Earth. A few years ago, his longtime quest for planetary remedies began to take form as a towering furnace built with castoff parts and a gasifier once owned by a Y2K doomsday cult. The 20-foot-tall furnace looks more like a tinker’s collection of rusty metal than an invention for the future of the planet. But in this Rube Goldberg contraption, John Miedema is turning forest and farm waste into promising new products — products that could help revive rural Oregon economies, keep contaminants out of rivers, store carbon in soils, and even save the fragile peat bogs of Canada.

Reaching temperatures as high as 700 degrees Celsius, John Miedema’s hand-crafted furnace turns woody wastes into biochars that are being tested at Oregon State. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

12 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 13 An Elegant MATRIX Woody waste finds new markets in biochar By Lee Sherman

Reaching temperatures as high as 700 degrees Celsius, John Miedema’s hand-crafted furnace turns woody wastes into biochars that are being tested at Oregon State. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

12 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 13 To push that vision, he is collaborating with scientists In the Northwest, where tons of biomass rots in forests and students just over the hill at Oregon State University or burns in slash piles, the conversion of waste into clean — researchers with expertise in subjects ranging from energy and marketable products is an environmental and horticulture and engineering to forestry, hydrology, soil economic win-win. science and natural resources. Together, the university researchers and the dogged entrepreneur are studying Heavy Metal “biochar,” woody waste (such as tree bark or nutshells) Miedema unscrews a giant mason jar and tips it up, that has been heated at very high temperatures in an pouring a pile of shiny black chunks into his hand. With oxygen-free furnace like the one Miedema built. Scientists the naked eye, it looks like the remnants of a camp- call the process “pyrolysis.” fire. But a closer view reveals the properties that have In essence, biochars are chunks or shards of solidi- inspired a big biochar buzz across the Pacific Northwest fied carbon full of tiny air pockets. Besides locking up and around the world. Under a powerful microscope, carbon that would otherwise contribute to greenhouse biochar sometimes resembles a honeycomb, other times gasses, they can serve as containers to hold beneficial bubble wrap or a sea sponge. Its internal structure differs, things added to soils (like water and microbes) or remove harmful things from storm water and industrial sites (like Woody wastes such as tree bark and filbert shells retain their underlying heavy metals and other toxins). As a bonus, energy structures during pyrolysis. Higher heat creates more nanopores. (Photo: generated during the conversion can be captured and Karl Maasdam) used onsite.

depending on whether it started out as Douglas fir bark, At OSU’s extension center in Aurora, researchers are testing biochar’s po- hazelnut shells, corncobs or some other “feedstock.” tential as a potting medium to replace peat moss. Myles Gray and Heather Stoven cut, dry and weigh marigolds grown in mixtures with varying Temperature, too, alters its structure, contributing to proportions of biochar. (Photos: Frank Miller) biochar’s astounding porosity. Its millions of micro- and nano-pores form “an elegant matrix,” in the words of OSU forestry instructor David Smith, whose students have “These are Endangered Species Act types of consider- investigated storm water filtration markets for biochar. ations.” Nason, who works with the Oregon Department “If you look under an electron microscope, what you of Transportation on ways to remove copper from storm see is the inherent structure of the plant — all the cell water, is looking into biochar. His lab has hooked up with walls and all these internal galleries,” says Miedema, who Miedema to begin testing char as a “low-cost alternative” founded the Pacific Northwest Biochar Initiative in 2009 to more expensive materials such as activated carbon. — a “brain trust” of academics, researchers, engineers, Cities, too, are taking notice. Corvallis, for instance, is foresters, farmers, policy experts and business leaders experimenting with biochars in bioswales, which are interested in moving biochar forward in the region. shallow hollows in urban landscapes designed to capture Those “internal galleries” can take up and hold enor- and filter storm water. mous amounts of water as well as minerals, nutrients, Another use for biochar is in potting mixes. With microbes and pollutants. Oregon State researchers are funding from the national Sun Grant Initiative, Professor studying ways to make practical use of this super-porosity Markus Kleber in Crop and Soil Science is testing various by creating “designer chars” — chars that are “artfully biochars for their potential to replace peat moss as a prepared” with special properties aimed at specific uses. potting medium in the greenhouse and nursery industry, One of those uses is environmental cleanup. Biochar Oregon’s top agricultural sector with sales of nearly $700 can absorb pollutants in storm water before dangerous million. Peat, harvested from pristine bogs in Canada, the metals like zinc (from roofs) and copper (from brake British Isles, Russia and other northern climes, is costly pads) flow into streams and rivers. “Copper is particu- both in dollars and environmental damage. Biochars larly troublesome because it’s been shown to be toxic to promise a cheaper, local alternative, says Kleber. He and juvenile salmon,” says OSU’s Jeff Nason, a professor in his graduate student Myles Gray have analyzed the water- Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering. holding capacity of chars made of Doug fir (more porous)

14 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 15 To push that vision, he is collaborating with scientists In the Northwest, where tons of biomass rots in forests and students just over the hill at Oregon State University or burns in slash piles, the conversion of waste into clean — researchers with expertise in subjects ranging from energy and marketable products is an environmental and horticulture and engineering to forestry, hydrology, soil economic win-win. science and natural resources. Together, the university researchers and the dogged entrepreneur are studying Heavy Metal “biochar,” woody waste (such as tree bark or nutshells) Miedema unscrews a giant mason jar and tips it up, that has been heated at very high temperatures in an pouring a pile of shiny black chunks into his hand. With oxygen-free furnace like the one Miedema built. Scientists the naked eye, it looks like the remnants of a camp- call the process “pyrolysis.” fire. But a closer view reveals the properties that have In essence, biochars are chunks or shards of solidi- inspired a big biochar buzz across the Pacific Northwest fied carbon full of tiny air pockets. Besides locking up and around the world. Under a powerful microscope, carbon that would otherwise contribute to greenhouse biochar sometimes resembles a honeycomb, other times gasses, they can serve as containers to hold beneficial bubble wrap or a sea sponge. Its internal structure differs, things added to soils (like water and microbes) or remove harmful things from storm water and industrial sites (like Woody wastes such as tree bark and filbert shells retain their underlying heavy metals and other toxins). As a bonus, energy structures during pyrolysis. Higher heat creates more nanopores. (Photo: generated during the conversion can be captured and Karl Maasdam) used onsite.

14 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 15 and filbert nuts (less porous) that have been heated to Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, E.F. Schumach- around the region was growing faster temperatures ranging from 300 to 700 degrees Celsius. er’s Small is Beautiful. The same summer he read Isaac than fireweed, everyone communicating They found that higher-temperature chars have more Asimov’s The Ends of the Earth about the melting icecaps through a burgeoning listserv. In 2009, surface area and therefore hold more water. (See the video and warming seas, he was fishing off southeast Alaska. biochar was a hot topic at a series of about Gray’s marigold trials at oregonstate.edu/terra.) One day, the crew hauled up something in the net that workshops on bio-based products held Also, with funding from the OSU Agricultural Research scared him. “We had a school of mackerel and a couple in Tillamook, Klamath Falls and Pend- Foundation, Kleber is designing a biochar to substitute of sunfish,” he recalls. “I’d never seen those species in leton. Put on jointly by OSU’s Institute for another horticultural standby, vermiculite, which is our nets before. I started asking around to the guys that for Natural Resources and Oregon BEST mined overseas and requires high-energy inputs during had been fishing the longest, and nobody had seen those (Built Environment & Sustainable Tech- processing. “Vermiculite puts heavy loads on the environ- species before.” To him, it felt as if he had stared into the nologies Center) to catalyze new markets ment,” says Kleber. Finally, researcher John Lambrinos face of global warming. for Oregon’s sagging rural economies, the in horticulture is investigating biochar as a lightweight Later on as he browsed the Internet, his mind awash workshops brought together researchers, water-retention medium for green roofs. with ideas about systems theory and his heart full of wood products companies, local govern- alarm over Earth’s peril, he Googled “carbon.” Up popped ments, tribal representatives and others Something Fishy “biochar.” He had found his sustainability grail. to brainstorm and strategize about new The grandson of a Dutch dairy farmer, John Miedema Starker Forests and Thompson Timber, where Miedema uses for woody biomass. “I came away saw his favorite childhood fishing holes in Marysville, was by then the director of biomass energy, invested with a concrete funding opportunity that Washington, gradually turn green and gunky as the herd in his biochar venture, footing the bill for the furnace could enable Douglas County to purchase where his grandad worked grew from 50 head to 500. fabrication at a defunct mill in Philomath. It wasn’t long a $350,000 piece of mobile equipment The blighted streams bothered him enough as a young before he was charring 100 pounds of biomass an hour that converts biomass at logging sites man that he abandoned dairy farming and went to sea, and reaching out to OSU scientists to test its structural into the right type of chips for biofuels purse-seining for salmon, long-lining for black cod and and chemical properties. and biochar,” reported Douglas County halibut. On the boat, he read a lot — Buckminster Fuller’s Meanwhile, the community of char-minded folks Commissioner Joseph Laurance. Other participants left the workshops eager to get more scientific findings on biochar, including data on carbon sequestration, soil amendments, pyrolysis technolo- “I’ve Never Been So Excited” gies and the economics of transporting biomass versus processing it onsite. A young scientist goes to the White house Black Earth Portland ninth-grader Meghana Rao was scouring the Web for infor- “Designer biochar” might sound like the mation on biochar when she stumbled across an intriguing paper by a pinnacle of 21st-century eco-technology. researcher named Markus Kleber. When she realized he was at Oregon But humans have known the potent State University, just 90 miles down the freeway from where she was properties of burnt wood for 2,000 a student at Jesuit High School, she emailed him with “a few ideas.” years, since the indigenous people of the Before long, she was conducting her own experiments in Kleber’s lab in Amazon Basin discovered an incred- Crop and Soil Sciences with guidance from the professor and graduate ible boost to fertility in soils enriched student Myles Gray. with char and other organic wastes. The By the end of the 2013 school year, Rao was standing on the White Portuguese later called this engineered House lawn describing her experiments on the carbon-holding capacity soil terra preta, “black earth.” In Japan of biochar to President Barack Obama. The high-school junior was one and Korea, farmers have long enriched of a handful of students nationwide selected to present their science their soils with charcoal. projects at the third annual White House Science Fair. “I took my biochar “Biochar is a new twist on an old stove with me — it’s a little at-home pyrolysis unit,” she says. concept,” notes David Smith. “It’s an The White House honor came on the heals of Rao’s winning a Young opportunity for upgrading wood waste, Naturalists Award from the American Museum of Natural History for the same project in 2012. She is now a senior at Jesuit. for turning low-grade materials into

John Miedema explains how his furnace works to organic farmers and others who are curious about the benefits of biochar. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

16 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 17 and filbert nuts (less porous) that have been heated to Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, E.F. Schumach- around the region was growing faster temperatures ranging from 300 to 700 degrees Celsius. er’s Small is Beautiful. The same summer he read Isaac than fireweed, everyone communicating They found that higher-temperature chars have more Asimov’s The Ends of the Earth about the melting icecaps through a burgeoning listserv. In 2009, surface area and therefore hold more water. (See the video and warming seas, he was fishing off southeast Alaska. biochar was a hot topic at a series of about Gray’s marigold trials at oregonstate.edu/terra.) One day, the crew hauled up something in the net that workshops on bio-based products held Also, with funding from the OSU Agricultural Research scared him. “We had a school of mackerel and a couple in Tillamook, Klamath Falls and Pend- Foundation, Kleber is designing a biochar to substitute of sunfish,” he recalls. “I’d never seen those species in leton. Put on jointly by OSU’s Institute for another horticultural standby, vermiculite, which is our nets before. I started asking around to the guys that for Natural Resources and Oregon BEST mined overseas and requires high-energy inputs during had been fishing the longest, and nobody had seen those (Built Environment & Sustainable Tech- processing. “Vermiculite puts heavy loads on the environ- species before.” To him, it felt as if he had stared into the nologies Center) to catalyze new markets ment,” says Kleber. Finally, researcher John Lambrinos face of global warming. for Oregon’s sagging rural economies, the in horticulture is investigating biochar as a lightweight Later on as he browsed the Internet, his mind awash workshops brought together researchers, water-retention medium for green roofs. with ideas about systems theory and his heart full of wood products companies, local govern- alarm over Earth’s peril, he Googled “carbon.” Up popped ments, tribal representatives and others Something Fishy “biochar.” He had found his sustainability grail. to brainstorm and strategize about new The grandson of a Dutch dairy farmer, John Miedema Starker Forests and Thompson Timber, where Miedema uses for woody biomass. “I came away saw his favorite childhood fishing holes in Marysville, was by then the director of biomass energy, invested with a concrete funding opportunity that Washington, gradually turn green and gunky as the herd in his biochar venture, footing the bill for the furnace could enable Douglas County to purchase where his grandad worked grew from 50 head to 500. fabrication at a defunct mill in Philomath. It wasn’t long a $350,000 piece of mobile equipment The blighted streams bothered him enough as a young before he was charring 100 pounds of biomass an hour that converts biomass at logging sites man that he abandoned dairy farming and went to sea, and reaching out to OSU scientists to test its structural into the right type of chips for biofuels purse-seining for salmon, long-lining for black cod and and chemical properties. and biochar,” reported Douglas County halibut. On the boat, he read a lot — Buckminster Fuller’s Meanwhile, the community of char-minded folks Commissioner Joseph Laurance. Other participants left the workshops eager to get more scientific findings on biochar, including data on carbon sequestration, soil amendments, pyrolysis technolo- “I’ve Never Been So Excited” gies and the economics of transporting biomass versus processing it onsite. A young scientist goes to the White house Black Earth Portland ninth-grader Meghana Rao was scouring the Web for infor- “Designer biochar” might sound like the mation on biochar when she stumbled across an intriguing paper by a pinnacle of 21st-century eco-technology. researcher named Markus Kleber. When she realized he was at Oregon But humans have known the potent State University, just 90 miles down the freeway from where she was properties of burnt wood for 2,000 a student at Jesuit High School, she emailed him with “a few ideas.” years, since the indigenous people of the Before long, she was conducting her own experiments in Kleber’s lab in Amazon Basin discovered an incred- Crop and Soil Sciences with guidance from the professor and graduate ible boost to fertility in soils enriched student Myles Gray. with char and other organic wastes. The By the end of the 2013 school year, Rao was standing on the White Portuguese later called this engineered House lawn describing her experiments on the carbon-holding capacity soil terra preta, “black earth.” In Japan of biochar to President Barack Obama. The high-school junior was one and Korea, farmers have long enriched of a handful of students nationwide selected to present their science their soils with charcoal. projects at the third annual White House Science Fair. “I took my biochar “Biochar is a new twist on an old stove with me — it’s a little at-home pyrolysis unit,” she says. concept,” notes David Smith. “It’s an The White House honor came on the heals of Rao’s winning a Young opportunity for upgrading wood waste, Naturalists Award from the American Museum of Natural History for the same project in 2012. She is now a senior at Jesuit. for turning low-grade materials into

John Miedema explains how his furnace works to organic farmers and others who are curious about the benefits of biochar. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

16 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 17 Where Growth high-value products that can boost rural economies. But to 1,000 years before microbes break it down and release before we can take it to market, there are a zillion perfor- the stored carbon — he brings the talk around to climate mance questions to be answered — questions about feed- change, to Asimov’s prescient book from 1975 that first stocks, particle size and so forth — along with standards alerted him to the looming threat. The carbon in biochar, and specifications to be developed.” he says, lasts for centuries sequestered in the soil. In this Meets Decay One question has to do with water flow. While scien- way, biomass becomes a means of taking CO2 out of the tists know that biochar captures pollutants along with atmosphere instead of letting it become a greenhouse gas storm water, they don’t yet know how well that water during rotting or burning. Fungal pigments stain wood flows through those biochars. “Biochar,” he says, “has very good uses for humans “When storm water occurs, we get a whole lot of it and the environment, for bettering our health and for with surprising beauty all at once,” says OSU hydrologist Todd Jarvis. “If you cleaning up the legacy of toxins we’ve left behind. We can’t get the water through the medium efficiently, it’s have a lot of work to do to clean up that legacy.” not going to be worthwhile for storm water treatment.” For Robinson, an assistant professor Dead Man’s Fingers in Wood Science and Engineering, all So last year, he and chemical engineering As Robinson explains, a bio-artist these tensions come together in the professor Christine Kelly worked with is one who creates art with living wooden bowls she turns on a lathe: student Perry Morrow to design hydraulic organisms. “Bio-art,” she says, “blurs gleaming, satiny bowls that are both experiments based on Darcy’s Law, an equa- the lines between science and art.” functional and ornamental, practical tion for describing the flow of a fluid through Her organisms of choice grow secreted and beautiful. Made of hardwoods like a porous medium. “We were looking at in forests, the trees stretching toward curly soft maple, sugar maple, box the physical hydraulics — the flow rates the sky, the mushrooms skulking elder and buckeye oak, the bowls are — of biochar,” says Jarvis, who directs the on the ground, their fruiting bodies By Lee Sherman adorned with pigments made by fungi Institute of Water and Watersheds at Oregon popping up on the decaying logs they whose ecological role is, ironically, to State. “How much water can go through it digest with enzymes. The mush- io-artist Sara decompose wood. For Robinson, it’s in gallons per minute, cubic feet per second? rooms’ common names suggest their the quintessential contradiction. Is it laminar flow, or is it turbulent flow? Robinson works at odd or whimsical shapes: dead man’s B “Wood is held in high esteem by Are flow rates a function of the size of the fingers Xylaria( polymorpha), green intersections, at places humans, while fungus is disdained,” biochar? The shape? The compressibility?” elf cup (Chlorociboria aerugina- she says. “It’s an emotional conflict.” where nature, ideas and scens) turkey tail (Trametes versi- Reminiscent of watercolor washes, Orange-Hot color). Machete in hand, Robinson emotions crisscross and shades of pink, blue and blue-green Miedema stands in the long shadow of his has even hacked through a Peruvian splash across bowls whose shapes towering furnace when a van pulls up and often collide. She revels rainforest and battled poisonous echo the anatomy of the wood. Others several people pile out. A couple more cars tangarana ants to hunt for fungi with in the contrasts and have a bleached look after she treats straggle in, a few more people join the group. fabulous tints. “We found some crazy them with white rot fungi. Still others “I love biochar!” one man, a farmer, says contradictions inherent colors!” she reports. are etched with lines of black and during introductions. “I’ve never heard The “extracellular” pigments these where growth meets brown, “zone lines” that result from of it,” a woman admits. They’ve come to fungal species produce, possibly to fungal antagonism — two species Philomath from Oregon Tilth in Corvallis, decay, science meets protect themselves from UV damage duking it out for territory. “It’s a war Organic Materials Review Institute in Eugene or incursions by other fungi, create a art, reverence meets story,” Robinson likes to joke. and the Corvallis Parks Department “peer natural stain in contact with certain learning group” for sustainable landscaping revulsion. wood species. “Because of their role to hear Miedema talk about biochar and in the environment,” she says, “these assess its suitability for gardening and colors are very stable, persisting in organic farming. sun and rain.” Squinting in the summer sun, they watch and listen as Miedema tells the story of biochar while showing off his furnace. “I (Above) The green stain on this bowl made can produce a wicked amount of heat,” he of curly hard maple comes from the fungus says, pointing out the throttles and valves Chlorociboria. that control temperature. “It gets orange-hot (Left) While scouring a Peruvian rainforest for specimens, Sara Robinson collected this fungus in there.” When he comes to the part about from the species Xylaria, the genus that con- biochar’s longevity in soils — it takes 500 tains dead man’s Fingers.

18 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 19 Where Growth high-value products that can boost rural economies. But to 1,000 years before microbes break it down and release before we can take it to market, there are a zillion perfor- the stored carbon — he brings the talk around to climate mance questions to be answered — questions about feed- change, to Asimov’s prescient book from 1975 that first stocks, particle size and so forth — along with standards alerted him to the looming threat. The carbon in biochar, and specifications to be developed.” he says, lasts for centuries sequestered in the soil. In this Meets Decay One question has to do with water flow. While scien- way, biomass becomes a means of taking CO2 out of the tists know that biochar captures pollutants along with atmosphere instead of letting it become a greenhouse gas storm water, they don’t yet know how well that water during rotting or burning. Fungal pigments stain wood flows through those biochars. “Biochar,” he says, “has very good uses for humans “When storm water occurs, we get a whole lot of it and the environment, for bettering our health and for with surprising beauty all at once,” says OSU hydrologist Todd Jarvis. “If you cleaning up the legacy of toxins we’ve left behind. We can’t get the water through the medium efficiently, it’s have a lot of work to do to clean up that legacy.” not going to be worthwhile for storm water treatment.” For Robinson, an assistant professor Dead Man’s Fingers in Wood Science and Engineering, all So last year, he and chemical engineering As Robinson explains, a bio-artist these tensions come together in the professor Christine Kelly worked with is one who creates art with living wooden bowls she turns on a lathe: student Perry Morrow to design hydraulic organisms. “Bio-art,” she says, “blurs gleaming, satiny bowls that are both experiments based on Darcy’s Law, an equa- the lines between science and art.” functional and ornamental, practical tion for describing the flow of a fluid through Her organisms of choice grow secreted and beautiful. Made of hardwoods like a porous medium. “We were looking at in forests, the trees stretching toward curly soft maple, sugar maple, box the physical hydraulics — the flow rates the sky, the mushrooms skulking elder and buckeye oak, the bowls are — of biochar,” says Jarvis, who directs the on the ground, their fruiting bodies By Lee Sherman adorned with pigments made by fungi Institute of Water and Watersheds at Oregon popping up on the decaying logs they whose ecological role is, ironically, to State. “How much water can go through it digest with enzymes. The mush- io-artist Sara decompose wood. For Robinson, it’s in gallons per minute, cubic feet per second? rooms’ common names suggest their the quintessential contradiction. Is it laminar flow, or is it turbulent flow? Robinson works at odd or whimsical shapes: dead man’s B “Wood is held in high esteem by Are flow rates a function of the size of the fingers Xylaria( polymorpha), green intersections, at places humans, while fungus is disdained,” biochar? The shape? The compressibility?” elf cup (Chlorociboria aerugina- she says. “It’s an emotional conflict.” where nature, ideas and scens) turkey tail (Trametes versi- Reminiscent of watercolor washes, Orange-Hot color). Machete in hand, Robinson emotions crisscross and shades of pink, blue and blue-green Miedema stands in the long shadow of his has even hacked through a Peruvian splash across bowls whose shapes towering furnace when a van pulls up and often collide. She revels rainforest and battled poisonous echo the anatomy of the wood. Others several people pile out. A couple more cars tangarana ants to hunt for fungi with in the contrasts and have a bleached look after she treats straggle in, a few more people join the group. fabulous tints. “We found some crazy them with white rot fungi. Still others “I love biochar!” one man, a farmer, says contradictions inherent colors!” she reports. are etched with lines of black and during introductions. “I’ve never heard The “extracellular” pigments these where growth meets brown, “zone lines” that result from of it,” a woman admits. They’ve come to fungal species produce, possibly to fungal antagonism — two species Philomath from Oregon Tilth in Corvallis, decay, science meets protect themselves from UV damage duking it out for territory. “It’s a war Organic Materials Review Institute in Eugene or incursions by other fungi, create a art, reverence meets story,” Robinson likes to joke. and the Corvallis Parks Department “peer natural stain in contact with certain learning group” for sustainable landscaping revulsion. wood species. “Because of their role to hear Miedema talk about biochar and in the environment,” she says, “these assess its suitability for gardening and colors are very stable, persisting in organic farming. sun and rain.” Squinting in the summer sun, they watch and listen as Miedema tells the story of biochar while showing off his furnace. “I (Above) The green stain on this bowl made can produce a wicked amount of heat,” he of curly hard maple comes from the fungus says, pointing out the throttles and valves Chlorociboria. that control temperature. “It gets orange-hot (Left) While scouring a Peruvian rainforest for specimens, Sara Robinson collected this fungus in there.” When he comes to the part about from the species Xylaria, the genus that con- biochar’s longevity in soils — it takes 500 tains dead man’s Fingers.

18 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 19 Since the Italian Renaissance, “Spalting is a value-added wood Dr. Spalting Caption Caption Caption Caption artists and woodworkers have used product that can be done to really Widely known in the woodworking Captionvvv Caption Caption naturally tinted woods in panels low-value wood,” she says. “So you blogosphere as “Dr. Spalting,” Caption Caption Caption Caption and veneers. Violin and guitar can spalt something like aspen, Robinson recently was dubbed by a Caption Caption makers have used them in musical which has no real inherent value as blogger named Cody as “perhaps the instruments. Now, Robinson is a woodworking wood. Before, it was foremost authority on spalted wood,” helping to lead a resurgence of the just firewood. Now, it’s a precious and by Tree Feller as “a bonafide art, called “spalting,” which adds wood that can be sold to wood- expert on spalting (PhD).” At age 31, value to wood that would otherwise workers and wood turners, who are with some 25 peer-reviewed articles bring little to the marketplace. She mostly retired people who shop. published in journals like Applied regularly advises woodworkers and There’s money to be had here.” Home Microbiology and Biotechnology is among a small group of artists and improvement companies, too, are and Wood Science & Technology, scientists who are taking spalting interested in mass-producing spalted she clearly has the academic creds to new levels with support from the wood for flooring and paneling, as well as the crafter chops. Her wood-products industry. Robinson says.

research has ranged from seeking Over in the College of Forestry (Opposite page) Pink, green, and yellow stains methods of minimizing strength loss woodshop, blocks called “rough from several fungal species grace this bowl of curly soft maple, along with “zone lines” while maximizing pigment produc- blanks” taken from 22 species of and white rot. (Above) This detail of an intarsia tion, to running experiments on native Northwest trees are being (wood inlay) is from the pulpit in St. Mary’s the effects of wood pH and copper treated with fungal pigments in Church in Greifswald, North Germany, made sulfate in stimulating pigments. plastic bins. It takes about three by Joachim Mekelenborg in 1587 and stained by Chlorociboria. (Below) The pink stain on this There’s a lot more science that needs months for the color to infuse the aspen bowl is from Scytalidium cuboideum. to happen, including toxicity testing, wood. Once the blanks have dried, before spalting hits the mass market. Robinson will settle in at her lathe, turning bowls in a flurry of sawdust. Pigment Precision Her finished bowls are represented In her lab, Robinson opens drawer by Michigamme Moonshine Art after drawer full of petri plates, Gallery in Michigan. She exhibits her stacked three or four deep. One by work worldwide. one, she holds the plates up to the light. The fungi growing inside create branching forms in colors from “Wood is held in high deep violet to bright yellow. On the shelves above are vials of pigments esteem by humans, while she has extracted from the plate fungus is disdained,” cultures. On the counter sits a series of test strips in wool, cotton and she says. “It’s an acetate, revealing another direction emotional conflict.” for fungal pigments: spalted fabric. “We collect the fungi, culture them in the lab and make pure Which brings us back to the ques- cultures for inoculation into the tion, is spalting a science, or is it an wood,” she says. “Our process takes art? Robinson challenges the very the guesswork out of spalting.” That question and the assumptions that precision is what will make fungal underlie it. To her, science and art pigments commercially viable for are one and the same, both driven by industry. discovery and creativity. “The only difference I can see,” she says, “is that scientists have lab notebooks.”

ONLINE: workshops, photos and more from Sara Robinson’s lab, northernspalting.com

20 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 21 Since the Italian Renaissance, “Spalting is a value-added wood Dr. Spalting Caption Caption Caption Caption artists and woodworkers have used product that can be done to really Widely known in the woodworking Captionvvv Caption Caption naturally tinted woods in panels low-value wood,” she says. “So you blogosphere as “Dr. Spalting,” Caption Caption Caption Caption and veneers. Violin and guitar can spalt something like aspen, Robinson recently was dubbed by a Caption Caption makers have used them in musical which has no real inherent value as blogger named Cody as “perhaps the instruments. Now, Robinson is a woodworking wood. Before, it was foremost authority on spalted wood,” helping to lead a resurgence of the just firewood. Now, it’s a precious and by Tree Feller as “a bonafide art, called “spalting,” which adds wood that can be sold to wood- expert on spalting (PhD).” At age 31, value to wood that would otherwise workers and wood turners, who are with some 25 peer-reviewed articles bring little to the marketplace. She mostly retired people who shop. published in journals like Applied regularly advises woodworkers and There’s money to be had here.” Home Microbiology and Biotechnology is among a small group of artists and improvement companies, too, are and Wood Science & Technology, scientists who are taking spalting interested in mass-producing spalted she clearly has the academic creds to new levels with support from the wood for flooring and paneling, as well as the crafter chops. Her wood-products industry. Robinson says.

ONLINE: workshops, photos and more from Sara Robinson’s lab, northernspalting.com

20 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 21 STUDENT RESEARCH // Preparing for the future Preparing for the future // STUDENT RESEARCH

Eco-Excellence “Coral Reefs Are Dying” Extraordinary When Jacob (Jake) Tepper was 13, he took up scuba diving so he could swim with the fish. His most enthralling dive happened students shoulder in the Cayman Islands. “You descend a hundred feet beside this vertical rock wall that reaches a depth of 3,000 feet and is the task of preserving covered with purple and pink corals,” he says. “Then you turn biodiversity around and look at the open ocean, this vast blueness without boundaries. It’s mind-blowing.” By Lee Sherman He chose Oregon State for its top-notch marine biology program. “I wanted to have experiences outside the classroom,” he says. “This program offers lots of opportunities.” Right away, he zeroed in on coral reefs for a Howard Hughes Medical Institute They all grew up immersed in (HHMI) undergrad research program. The summer after his nature: catching frogs, diving freshman year, he worked on a joint experiment with a lab in Florida to study macro-algae (seaweed) encroachment in Key reefs, camping out. Now, they’re Largo, where corals are struggling to compete for habitat. “Why all committed to studying and are the algae winning?” was the research question for Tepper (Photo courtesy of Jake Tepper) and his team, led by OSU microbiologist Rebecca Vega Thurber. restoring the natural world, each “What’s the role of micro-organisms like bacteria and viruses?” This fall, he heads to Bonaire for more reef research in his or her own way. For Justin Diving at Pickles Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine through the Council on International Educational Exchange. Conner, that means investigating Sanctuary, Tepper collected mucus from the coral with a syringe And as OSU’s most recent recipient of the prestigious NOAA for DNA analysis and took samples of three algae species, two Hollings Scholarship, he will be working with a NOAA scientist the chytrid fungus and other (Photo: Frank Miller) brown and one green. He communicated with his dive partner on yet another project, still to be decided. “My focus is on “Amphibians using basic scuba hand signals and messages scrawled on threats to amphibians. Allison Working with Oregon State’s marine conservation biology,” Tepper says. “Coral reefs are underwater clipboards. His Master Diver, Rescue Diver and Are Crashing” prominent frog scientist Andy Blaustein, dying. Hurricanes, pollution, overfishing, farm runoff, ocean Stringer’s ecosystem studies have Scientific Diver training proved essential, particularly when one of acidification, big city wastes, disease — all these things destroy When manatees and alligators are mem- Conner spent a summer researching taken her from Chile to Siberia. his buddies sprung a leak and needed to share Jake’s air. Tepper reefs. I want to do research on reefs that will lead to the creation bers of your backyard ecosystem, it’s like “Bd” — Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, presented his experiment at HHMI. of a lot more marine protected areas.” As for Jake Tepper, researching living with a ready-made science project. a chytrid fungus that is decimating Justin Conner took full advantage of the frog populations worldwide. When he coral reefs is how he plans to biodiversity bursting in and around the was knee deep in a pond one morning, help save these fragile marine Florida canal that linked his childhood collecting egg masses and swabbing frogs A fisheries and wildlife major minoring for signs of the fungus, he heard gurgling “There’s Still Hope” in Spanish, Stringer also has studied communities. Here are the stories home to the ocean. There were peacock bass and cichlids to hook. There were in his rubber boots. “Turns out I had holes Siberia seldom tempts Western travelers conservation and rural policymaking in of three Oregon State University frogs and toads to collect. There were in my waders,” he says. “My feet got to explore its vast taiga forests and Chile at the Universidad Austral de Chile cold. But we saw tons of tadpoles!” endless permafrost — unless that traveler student researchers who are giving black racers and corn snakes to stalk with fisheries professor Dan Edge. She has beneath the dense, tropical foliage. He also worked on a project with the happens to be Allison Stringer. For the investigated nutrient cycling in the H.J. everything they’ve got to heal a The curious little boy was boggled by University of Pittsburgh, looking at the OSU science student, nothing could be Andrews Experimental Forest with forestry effects of carotenoids (plant pigments more enticing than spending a summer planet in peril. the biology of it all. “I was always out in professor Mark Harmon. And she earned nature catching stuff,” says Oregon State that are sources of vitamin A and month “out in the middle of nowhere” her “dive master” scuba certification zoology student Justin Conner. “I always antioxidants) on three species of frogs. — living on a barge at the Northeast in preparation to study lionfish in the liked creepy and crawly.” His poster earned him a scholarship Science Station near a tiny town called Bahamas with famed reef ecologist Mark One day when he was 8 or 9, he was and first-place award in undergradiate Chersky and discovering the long-buried Hixon. She’s also taking a non-credit sitting in the living room riveted to Animal research at Arizona State. “Amphibians bones of mammoths and ancient bison in course in Russian after learning a bit of the Planet, his favorite channel. The episode are crashing at an astronomical rate,” the eroded banks of a nearby river. She language in Siberia. showed a guy milking snakes for venom. laments Conner. “About 70 percent of measured tree rings with a high-powered Spanish and Russian, lionfish and When the man on camera was identified species are threatened or endangered.” microscope and recorded carbon levels permafrost, tree rings, Siberian tundra as a “herpetologist,” Justin jumped up Conner’s other big cause is bringing in soils to gauge the impact of climate and Bahamian reefs: What ties these and rushed to the computer. H-e-r-p-e- minority students like himself into change on Arctic ecosystems. disparate threads together? “Broadly, t-o-l-o-g-i-s-t, he Googled. That’s the the sciences. “I’m an activist,” he “Preliminary findings show a general it’s ecology and ecosystems,” Stringer moment this child with an innate affinity declares. He recently launched a club on pattern of slowing growth rates in trees,” explains. “Underlying everything I do is for cold-blooded organisms discovered campus called CAMS — Council for the Stringer reports. “The hypothesis is that wanting to give back to the world — to there’s an actual job description for Advancement of Minorities in Science — as temperatures increase and permafrost leave the world a better place than it people like him. “I realized I could do this to connect students of color to mentors, thaws, the water table drops and drops was before. Right now, everything is for a living!” he marvels. research opportunities and professional and drops, eventually dropping below overharvested, overused. But there’s still development. (Photo courtesy of Allison Stringer) where trees have roots.” hope. I’d like to be that hope.”

22 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 23 STUDENT RESEARCH // Preparing for the future Preparing for the future // STUDENT RESEARCH

22 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 23 Through the Ice On the Antarctic seafloor, life thrives in surprising abundance By Nick Houtman

ndrew Thurber is a self-described “connoisseur of worms.” He finds these wriggling, sinuous creatures, many with jaws and enough legs to propel an army, to be “enticing.” In the Antarctic, where he dives through the ice in Athe name of science, a type of worm known as a nemertean can reach 7 feet long. Giant worms aren’t the only extreme feature of the seafloor next to the Ross Ice Shelf. Voracious sea stars and sponges the size of a person dot a muddy, rock-strewn landscape. At nearly 2 degrees below zero Celsius, sea water in the Southern Ocean is as cold as it can get without freezing. And it’s stunningly clear. Although sunlight filters dimly through surface ice, visibility can reach 500 feet on a bad day. On a good day, a diver can see underwater mountain ranges in the distance.

24 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 25 Through the Ice On the Antarctic seafloor, life thrives in surprising abundance By Nick Houtman

24 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 25 What attracts scientists like Thurber to this eerie, forbidding place is a riddle. Here, where darkness prevails for much of the year, the density of some species is higher than anywhere else on the planet. Colonies of worms, Thurber’s favorite animals, have five times the number of individuals, up to 150,000 per square meter, as one would predict and twice more than any other known location. In attempting to understand what’s going on in this remote habitat, Thurber is revealing fundamental processes that fuel deep-sea ecosystems worldwide. His work could also refine estimates of how carbon is sequestered in the deep sea, a critical question in climate change. Diving Through the Ice Over the last decade, Thurber has made the often turbulent trip to the frozen continent four times. Near the United States base at McMurdo, he and his team drill a hole through as much as 10 to 15 feet of ice to reach the water. They place a warming hut over the opening, as though they were preparing for a day of ice fishing. Not surprisingly, divers take extraordinary care in this harsh environment. They wear extra layers, including three hoods, and cover nearly every inch of skin. “The

Worms, anemones and a sea urchin dot the only thing that is exposed is my lips, and when you get in sea floor next to one of Thurber’s experi- the water, they go numb immediately,” says Thurber. mental enclosures. (Photo: Andrew Thurber) Divers avoid breathing into their scuba apparatus until they’re submerged. In the frigid Antarctic air, moisture in the breath can freeze the regulator and cause the entire air supply to discharge at once. And if vapor accidentally hits the inside of a facemask, it can rapidly turn into a sheet of ice and obscure vision. Nevertheless, for Thurber, the sea is actually a relief from the bitter Antarctic wind. “The water is so much Ice stalactites, also known as “brinicles,” more pleasant than the air; it’s wonderful,” he says. form under the sea ice when super cold saline water interacts with the ocean. Small Once underwater, Thurber spends time exploring his amphipods swarm as they feed on the surroundings and collecting samples of seafloor sediment algae that cling to the ice. “It felt much like to take back to his lab. In 2012, he and Rory Welsh, an swimming underneath a giant beehive,” Oregon State graduate student in microbiology, investi- says Thurber. “Thankfully, they don’t sting.” (Photo: Andrew Thurber) gated the 100-foot face of a glacier that ended in the Ross Sea. Streaming out from the bottom of the ice onto rocks were mysterious filaments of microorganisms. “We have no idea what it is,” says Thurber. “It’s one of the things we By “food,” Thurber means the algae that grow on worms and other animals, back in a well-stocked biology hope to study in upcoming years.” the bottom and edges of the sea ice. For a brief period lab. He analyzes some for microbial fingerprints to see Thurber has set his sights on understanding the rela- during the Antarctic summer, algae “rain down onto the how abundant the bacteria are and who’s eating whom. tionship between microorganisms and marine animals. In seafloor” after they die, he says. Thurber is testing the He conducts experiments on other tubes to see how the 2011, he reported on a type of crab that “farms” bacteria possibility that worms and microorganisms feast on this organisms process nutrients. on its claws and lives off the harvest. “There’s an idea abundance of organic matter. “By the end of the winter, In one experiment on the seafloor, Thurber placed that bacteria don’t do well in the cold and play a minor the easily available food is gone, and the worms switch to transparent tubes vertically into the sediment. He put role in these ecosystems compared to animals,” he says. eating their competitors. They are living off bacteria as a some in the dark by covering them with black elec- Andrew Thurber suits up for another “The general idea is that the worms bury their food in the food source,” says Thurber. trical tape. The next day, he took them back to the lab Antarctic dive. (Photo: Stacy Kim) mud and eat it throughout the year, sort of like putting To find out which idea — whether the worms store their — including the muddy, wriggling contents — to see if their food in a refrigerator. This is called the ‘food bank food in the mud or dine on microorganisms — is closer to organisms on the seafloor were actually producing food hypothesis.’ I don’t know that I buy that, so that’s one of the truth, Thurber collects tubes of sediment during his through photosynthesis. “It turned out that diatoms on the things I’m testing.” dives. Within an hour, he can have them, complete with the seafloor were producing about 25 percent of the daily

26 TERRA » SPRING 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 27 What attracts scientists like Thurber to this eerie, forbidding place is a riddle. Here, where darkness prevails for much of the year, the density of some species is higher than anywhere else on the planet. Colonies of worms, Thurber’s favorite animals, have five times the number of individuals, up to 150,000 per square meter, as one would predict and twice more than any other known location. In attempting to understand what’s going on in this remote habitat, Thurber is revealing fundamental processes that fuel deep-sea ecosystems worldwide. His work could also refine estimates of how carbon is sequestered in the deep sea, a critical question in climate change. Diving Through the Ice Over the last decade, Thurber has made the often turbulent trip to the frozen continent four times. Near the United States base at McMurdo, he and his team drill a hole through as much as 10 to 15 feet of ice to reach the water. They place a warming hut over the opening, as though they were preparing for a day of ice fishing. Not surprisingly, divers take extraordinary care in this harsh environment. They wear extra layers, including three hoods, and cover nearly every inch of skin. “The

26 TERRA » SPRING 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 27 energy for the community, the whole community, including the bacteria, worms and other animals,” Thurber says. “That may be an additional food source during the light time of the year. Since there may be more food available than scientists thought, that means the worms have even a greater swing between feast and famine over the course of the year.” Muddy Planet Almost two-thirds of the planet is covered by a vast expanse of dark, muddy seafloor where life thrives despite extreme conditions. These Researcher Profile mechanisms — how animals compete with and When Andrew Thurber started his journey in eat bacteria, how seasonal pulses of nutrients marine biology at Hawaii Pacific University, he got stimulate growth — may control the long-term a surprise. “I thought I wanted to work with fish,” productivity of the marine environment as well he says. “Turns out I don’t.” as long-term carbon sequestration, a critical Instead, in an Antarctic research lab, he became enamored with worms. “Worms are step in the global carbon cycle. Since most of the incredibly diverse. That was one of the most seafloor is thousands of meters deep, well beyond amazing things to me,” he says. “They don’t all the range of divers, the Antarctic happens to be look like earthworms. They have feet and these the most easily accessible place to find out how crazy breathing structures. I found them kind of these systems work. enticing.” Ecologists, Thurber says, have spent a lot of After getting his bachelor’s, Thurber conducted time studying how large animals interact — graduate work in Antarctic ecology at the Moss wolves and moose, for example, or lions and Landing Marine Laboratory near Monterey, Cali- gazelle. In contrast, science has largely ignored fornia. He worked with veteran Antarctic seafloor how animals compete with and prey on micro- ecologist Stacy Kim to understand how sea stars organisms. “Since bacteria and archaea perform and microorganisms decompose sewage waste in most of the important chemical reactions on the the Ross Sea. He received his Ph.D. at the Scripps planet, that’s a real shortcoming in our under- Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, standing of the globe,” he adds. working on deep-sea habitats fueled by bacteria and archaea. ONLINE: see Thurber’s blog for more photos and Thurber’s research has taken him to soft sedi- last winter’s reports from the field, blogs.oregon- ments, hydrothermal vents and methane seeps state.edu/colddarkbenthos/ from Costa Rica to New Zealand and Antarctica. Now a post-doctoral scientist in the Oregon State University College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, he studies the role of a family of worms (Ampharetidae) in the release of methane from the seafloor and the boom- and-bust cycle of productivity in deep-sea Worms such as this dorvilleid polychaete ecosystems. are a crucial but poorly understood part His research in the Antarctic has been of seafloor ecosystems. (Photo: Andrew Thurber) supported by the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation.

Plastic tubes placed into the seafloor enable Andrew Thurber to measure how much carbon is processed by plankton, worms and other organisms. (Photo: Rob Robbins)

28 TERRA » SPRING 2013 SPRING 2013 » TERRA 29 energy for the community, the whole community, including the bacteria, worms and other animals,” Thurber says. “That may be an additional food source during the light time of the year. Since there may be more food available than scientists thought, that means the worms have even a greater swing between feast and famine over the course of the year.” Muddy Planet Almost two-thirds of the planet is covered by a vast expanse of dark, muddy seafloor where life thrives despite extreme conditions. These Researcher Profile mechanisms — how animals compete with and When Andrew Thurber started his journey in eat bacteria, how seasonal pulses of nutrients marine biology at Hawaii Pacific University, he got stimulate growth — may control the long-term a surprise. “I thought I wanted to work with fish,” productivity of the marine environment as well he says. “Turns out I don’t.” as long-term carbon sequestration, a critical Instead, in an Antarctic research lab, he became enamored with worms. “Worms are step in the global carbon cycle. Since most of the incredibly diverse. That was one of the most seafloor is thousands of meters deep, well beyond amazing things to me,” he says. “They don’t all the range of divers, the Antarctic happens to be look like earthworms. They have feet and these the most easily accessible place to find out how crazy breathing structures. I found them kind of these systems work. enticing.” Ecologists, Thurber says, have spent a lot of After getting his bachelor’s, Thurber conducted time studying how large animals interact — graduate work in Antarctic ecology at the Moss wolves and moose, for example, or lions and Landing Marine Laboratory near Monterey, Cali- gazelle. In contrast, science has largely ignored fornia. He worked with veteran Antarctic seafloor how animals compete with and prey on micro- ecologist Stacy Kim to understand how sea stars organisms. “Since bacteria and archaea perform and microorganisms decompose sewage waste in most of the important chemical reactions on the the Ross Sea. He received his Ph.D. at the Scripps planet, that’s a real shortcoming in our under- Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, standing of the globe,” he adds. working on deep-sea habitats fueled by bacteria and archaea. ONLINE: see Thurber’s blog for more photos and Thurber’s research has taken him to soft sedi- last winter’s reports from the field, blogs.oregon- ments, hydrothermal vents and methane seeps state.edu/colddarkbenthos/ from Costa Rica to New Zealand and Antarctica. Now a post-doctoral scientist in the Oregon State University College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, he studies the role of a family of worms (Ampharetidae) in the release of methane from the seafloor and the boom- and-bust cycle of productivity in deep-sea Worms such as this dorvilleid polychaete ecosystems. are a crucial but poorly understood part His research in the Antarctic has been of seafloor ecosystems. (Photo: Andrew Thurber) supported by the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation.

Plastic tubes placed into the seafloor enable Andrew Thurber to measure how much carbon is processed by plankton, worms and other organisms. (Photo: Rob Robbins)

28 TERRA » SPRING 2013 SPRING 2013 » TERRA 29 hen Joshua Rist walked into the music department’s For Rist, composing happens in the rhythm of life. For audition room at Oregon State University in 2009, example, the inspiration for Invictus came to him while he was SINGING he aimed to impress the faculty with a composition painting a house in the summer of 2011. He was also taking Wcombining the driving energy of rock ‘n’ roll with the emotional summer classes at OSU and going through an intense period of power of a classical symphony. “I had written this piano concerto introspection. The poem by Henley really spoke to him, he told that was exciting to me, and I thought I would just let it rip,” the Erin Sneller, publicist in the Department of Music. “‘I am the His Story 24-year-old master’s student recalls. master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’ It puts the onus “I went in there and just started tearing away at the piano. She of responsibility for your life on you. That’s very empowering and (music professor Rachelle McCabe) was literally white-knuckled. very humbling to me,” Rist says. OSU master’s student explores She wanted to ask me to stop but let me finish. She said, ‘You In a Benton Hall practice room on the OSU campus, Rist drew deep questions through music could have damaged our piano.’ I knew so little about what I was a line on a white board as he read Henley’s poem over and over. doing when I started at OSU,” he adds. The line rose and fell along with his voice. With each passing, he By Nick Houtman | Photo by Chris Becerra When Rist gave that performance, he already had a well- found new meaning in the changing tempo. He played with the developed love of the art. He started playing piano as a child. dynamics — shifting intensity and volume — until he found the He had performed in worship and garage bands at his church “joyful statement that it really is. Even with this bleak backdrop and completed an associate’s degree in music at Linn-Benton at the beginning, it’s this gem of self-determination,” he says. Community College. During a humanitarian trip to Nigeria, he He finished the piece just before classes started in the fall and even taught children and adults on a battery-powered keyboard. dropped it in Zielke’s mailbox. His musical passion ranged widely, from Beethoven, Liszt and Then there was a year of practice and refinement with the OSU Rachmaninoff to Muse, U2 and Coldplay. Chamber Choir. Rist made further revisions and added a cello To say that Rist blossomed under the tutelage of McCabe, part. “The choir was very patient in working with me. Even in a Steven Zielke and others in the Oregon State Department of Music performance, Dr. Zielke would get a twinkle in his eye and try is like saying that Mozart had a little talent. In the last four years, something different,” says Rist. the Brownsville, Oregon, native has written five choral composi- The choir performed Invictus during 2012. YouTube recordings tions for the OSU Chamber Choir and won the university’s Kraft drew attention to it. Word spread. Then Florida State University Choral Composition Challenge three times. One of his songs, conductor Kevin Fenton contacted Rist and requested permission Invictus, based on William Ernest Henley’s poem by the same to perform it with choirs at the university and in the Tallahassee name, has been performed by choirs in Oregon, Kansas, Florida, community. Fenton took it further, to the American Choral Direc- North Carolina, Virginia and Texas. It was published in 2013 by tor’s Association National Conference in Dallas, Texas, and to Earthsongs, a Corvallis-based multicultural music publisher multiple performances in a just-completed European tour. owned by former OSU choir director Ron Jeffers. “It was Josh’s extraordinary intensity and sincerity that first Singing in the Choir suggested to me that there was a ‘composer-in-residence’ when In other compositions, Rist has explored the experience of birth he sat down at the defenseless piano and played his Invictus,” from the perspective of a baby (The Cave) and celebrated the says Jeffers. “He sang it from the top of his lungs and the bottom duality of light and dark within the human soul (Lux Beatissima). of his heart. Certain ‘refinements’ followed, the most significant “The big medium of choir lends itself to these questions that being the late addition of the heroic solo cello.” have been asked for centuries,” he says. “There’s a microcosm of humanity happening in the choir. Singing in a choir makes you Surprise feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself.” None of this was on Rist’s radar when he auditioned. He expected And Rist has discovered that for a composer, a personal, to develop his skill as a choral teacher. He completed his Master’s honest voice can move others. “When I found myself in the choir, of Arts in Teaching last summer, but on his way to becoming an I decided this is what I’m about, what I want to write for. I want educator, he discovered a gift for composing. “I didn‘t see this to write the music that’s in my heart, that moves me. When you happening,” he says. “I didn’t know it would come to this. You sing your story, that’s a gift that a composer can offer to others.” hear the music or you discover the music and write it down, and Every performance, he adds, reflects demanding practice it just keeps going.” sessions for the singers and the choir director. They hone the Homeschooled, the second oldest of eight children, Rist notes, play with the rhythm and sound the words. They focus on discovered choral singing at 16 while taking courses at Linn- breath. “There’s no music until you fill your lungs with air and Benton. He credits his parents’ open search for answers to life’s then give it to someone else,” he says. “Music is at its best when big questions — How do we perceive God? What does it mean to it is genuinely expressed through the performer and shared with be human? — with inspiring his personal quest through music. an attentive listener. That’s where the magic happens.” “I’m still asking big questions, but I’m looking for answers in Rist now shares his teaching skills and his love of music in a different ways and in different places than I used to,” he says. full-time job at Hermiston High School. “Because the world has opened up to me, I hope my music can do that for others, open up the world a little bit for them.”

30 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 31 hen Joshua Rist walked into the music department’s For Rist, composing happens in the rhythm of life. For audition room at Oregon State University in 2009, example, the inspiration for Invictus came to him while he was SINGING he aimed to impress the faculty with a composition painting a house in the summer of 2011. He was also taking Wcombining the driving energy of rock ‘n’ roll with the emotional summer classes at OSU and going through an intense period of power of a classical symphony. “I had written this piano concerto introspection. The poem by Henley really spoke to him, he told that was exciting to me, and I thought I would just let it rip,” the Erin Sneller, publicist in the Department of Music. “‘I am the His Story 24-year-old master’s student recalls. master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’ It puts the onus “I went in there and just started tearing away at the piano. She of responsibility for your life on you. That’s very empowering and (music professor Rachelle McCabe) was literally white-knuckled. very humbling to me,” Rist says. OSU master’s student explores She wanted to ask me to stop but let me finish. She said, ‘You In a Benton Hall practice room on the OSU campus, Rist drew deep questions through music could have damaged our piano.’ I knew so little about what I was a line on a white board as he read Henley’s poem over and over. doing when I started at OSU,” he adds. The line rose and fell along with his voice. With each passing, he By Nick Houtman | Photo by Chris Becerra When Rist gave that performance, he already had a well- found new meaning in the changing tempo. He played with the developed love of the art. He started playing piano as a child. dynamics — shifting intensity and volume — until he found the He had performed in worship and garage bands at his church “joyful statement that it really is. Even with this bleak backdrop and completed an associate’s degree in music at Linn-Benton at the beginning, it’s this gem of self-determination,” he says. Community College. During a humanitarian trip to Nigeria, he He finished the piece just before classes started in the fall and even taught children and adults on a battery-powered keyboard. dropped it in Zielke’s mailbox. His musical passion ranged widely, from Beethoven, Liszt and Then there was a year of practice and refinement with the OSU Rachmaninoff to Muse, U2 and Coldplay. Chamber Choir. Rist made further revisions and added a cello To say that Rist blossomed under the tutelage of McCabe, part. “The choir was very patient in working with me. Even in a Steven Zielke and others in the Oregon State Department of Music performance, Dr. Zielke would get a twinkle in his eye and try is like saying that Mozart had a little talent. In the last four years, something different,” says Rist. the Brownsville, Oregon, native has written five choral composi- The choir performed Invictus during 2012. YouTube recordings tions for the OSU Chamber Choir and won the university’s Kraft drew attention to it. Word spread. Then Florida State University Choral Composition Challenge three times. One of his songs, conductor Kevin Fenton contacted Rist and requested permission Invictus, based on William Ernest Henley’s poem by the same to perform it with choirs at the university and in the Tallahassee name, has been performed by choirs in Oregon, Kansas, Florida, community. Fenton took it further, to the American Choral Direc- North Carolina, Virginia and Texas. It was published in 2013 by tor’s Association National Conference in Dallas, Texas, and to Earthsongs, a Corvallis-based multicultural music publisher multiple performances in a just-completed European tour. owned by former OSU choir director Ron Jeffers. “It was Josh’s extraordinary intensity and sincerity that first Singing in the Choir suggested to me that there was a ‘composer-in-residence’ when In other compositions, Rist has explored the experience of birth he sat down at the defenseless piano and played his Invictus,” from the perspective of a baby (The Cave) and celebrated the says Jeffers. “He sang it from the top of his lungs and the bottom duality of light and dark within the human soul (Lux Beatissima). of his heart. Certain ‘refinements’ followed, the most significant “The big medium of choir lends itself to these questions that being the late addition of the heroic solo cello.” have been asked for centuries,” he says. “There’s a microcosm of humanity happening in the choir. Singing in a choir makes you Surprise feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself.” None of this was on Rist’s radar when he auditioned. He expected And Rist has discovered that for a composer, a personal, to develop his skill as a choral teacher. He completed his Master’s honest voice can move others. “When I found myself in the choir, of Arts in Teaching last summer, but on his way to becoming an I decided this is what I’m about, what I want to write for. I want educator, he discovered a gift for composing. “I didn‘t see this to write the music that’s in my heart, that moves me. When you happening,” he says. “I didn’t know it would come to this. You sing your story, that’s a gift that a composer can offer to others.” hear the music or you discover the music and write it down, and Every performance, he adds, reflects demanding practice it just keeps going.” sessions for the singers and the choir director. They hone the Homeschooled, the second oldest of eight children, Rist notes, play with the rhythm and sound the words. They focus on discovered choral singing at 16 while taking courses at Linn- breath. “There’s no music until you fill your lungs with air and Benton. He credits his parents’ open search for answers to life’s then give it to someone else,” he says. “Music is at its best when big questions — How do we perceive God? What does it mean to it is genuinely expressed through the performer and shared with be human? — with inspiring his personal quest through music. an attentive listener. That’s where the magic happens.” “I’m still asking big questions, but I’m looking for answers in Rist now shares his teaching skills and his love of music in a different ways and in different places than I used to,” he says. full-time job at Hermiston High School. “Because the world has opened up to me, I hope my music can do that for others, open up the world a little bit for them.”

30 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 31 al gic olo nd Bi i a m half-ounce flying mammal, a University of Texas Health Science tubers in their lightless warrens, a Atiny marsupial that glides from Center in San Antonio, which the wrinkly rodents never develop ig tree limb to tree limb, and a hairless, maintains a cell bank representing cancer. Bats, too, rarely get cancer. r Perez thinks these long-lived O burrowing rodent with supersize at least 30 animal species. When front teeth all share a trait that she views those cells under her species may be more resistant to makes them intriguing to researcher microscope, she’s looking for protein misfolding and aggregation le Viviana Perez: exceptional longevity. aggregations of malformed proteins because evolution has equipped them The little brown bat Myotis( and the mechanisms that resist, with better protein equilibrium Mo lucifungus), common across North repair or recycle the damage. or “homeostasis.” Her earlier d America, has been known to live Scientists call such protein studies with bats and mole rats more than 30 years. So has the malformation “misfolding.” You have suggested that, compared ke naked mole rat (Heterocephalus can think of protein formation with mice, “proteins from long- Na glaber) from East Africa. The sugar as a kind of biological origami, in lived species are structurally more Viviana Perez, an assistant glider (Petaurus brevicepts), native which a coil or strand of amino acids stable.” Her current study will test professor in the Department of this hypothesis by comparing the to Australia, can live 15 years. “folds” itself into a 3-D structure Biochemistry and Biophysics at three long-lived species against three In contrast, most similarly sized to become functional. Sometimes, Oregon State University, grew up helper molecules called “protein short-lived species of rodent, bat mammals, such as mice and “lab in Santiago, Chile. After earning chaperones” assist in the folding and marsupial (lab mouse, evening ts opossums,” have a lifespan of only her Ph.D. at the University of three or four years. and refolding. When the malformed bat and lab opossum). She adds a Chile in 2004, she worked as a ra Uncovering the secrets to these proteins can’t be repaired, a properly fluorescent protein associated with post-doctoral researcher at the animals’ remarkable staying power functioning system will send in Huntington’s disease to the animal Barshop Institute for Longevity and could point the way to healthier enzymes to break them down and cells and then follows it to see aging for humans, says Perez, a carry them away. But if something whether it forms clumps. Aging Studies at the University of biochemist in Oregon State’s Linus goes wrong and the bad proteins “If all three of the long-lived Texas Health Science Center. With Pauling Institute. She is investigating don’t get cleaned up, they stick species show better quality control funding from the Ellison Medical herman the animals’ “cellular surveillance” together to form aggregates that can for proteins,” she says, “my study Foundation, her research seeks to ee S By L abilities — that is, how well their lead to neurodegenerative diseases would show for the first time that generate new insights into human protein homeostasis might be an bodies can find and repair damaged like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and aging through the study of protein important mechanism in how proteins before they cause harm. other chronic illnesses associated homeostasis, dietary restriction with aging. species have evolved to have in misfolded proteins You might imagine that she would and an immunosuppressant drug Naked mole rats hold special long lifespans.” need colonies of mole rats, bats and called rapamycin. Seeking the secrets of longevity sugar gliders for her experiments. interest in aging research. While But maintaining such species in they live to ripe old ages eating labs — especially the finicky mole rat, which demands ample space for burrowing plus a daily diet of fresh fruits and veggies — is too expensive and labor intensive, she says. To prove her point, she reports that only two labs in the United States maintain colonies of naked mole rats. So instead of using live animals, she works with live cells. These she obtains from her collaborators at the

Known for their exceptional longevity, these three mammalian species — the little brown bat, the naked mole rat and the sugar glider — may hold clues to healthy human aging.

32 TERRA » FALL 20102013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 33 al gic olo nd Bi i a m half-ounce flying mammal, a University of Texas Health Science tubers in their lightless warrens, a Atiny marsupial that glides from Center in San Antonio, which the wrinkly rodents never develop ig tree limb to tree limb, and a hairless, maintains a cell bank representing cancer. Bats, too, rarely get cancer. r Perez thinks these long-lived O burrowing rodent with supersize at least 30 animal species. When front teeth all share a trait that she views those cells under her species may be more resistant to makes them intriguing to researcher microscope, she’s looking for protein misfolding and aggregation le Viviana Perez: exceptional longevity. aggregations of malformed proteins because evolution has equipped them The little brown bat Myotis( and the mechanisms that resist, with better protein equilibrium Mo lucifungus), common across North repair or recycle the damage. or “homeostasis.” Her earlier d America, has been known to live Scientists call such protein studies with bats and mole rats more than 30 years. So has the malformation “misfolding.” You have suggested that, compared ke naked mole rat (Heterocephalus can think of protein formation with mice, “proteins from long- Na glaber) from East Africa. The sugar as a kind of biological origami, in lived species are structurally more Viviana Perez, an assistant glider (Petaurus brevicepts), native which a coil or strand of amino acids stable.” Her current study will test professor in the Department of this hypothesis by comparing the to Australia, can live 15 years. “folds” itself into a 3-D structure Biochemistry and Biophysics at three long-lived species against three In contrast, most similarly sized to become functional. Sometimes, Oregon State University, grew up helper molecules called “protein short-lived species of rodent, bat mammals, such as mice and “lab in Santiago, Chile. After earning chaperones” assist in the folding and marsupial (lab mouse, evening ts opossums,” have a lifespan of only her Ph.D. at the University of three or four years. and refolding. When the malformed bat and lab opossum). She adds a Chile in 2004, she worked as a ra Uncovering the secrets to these proteins can’t be repaired, a properly fluorescent protein associated with post-doctoral researcher at the animals’ remarkable staying power functioning system will send in Huntington’s disease to the animal Barshop Institute for Longevity and could point the way to healthier enzymes to break them down and cells and then follows it to see aging for humans, says Perez, a carry them away. But if something whether it forms clumps. Aging Studies at the University of biochemist in Oregon State’s Linus goes wrong and the bad proteins “If all three of the long-lived Texas Health Science Center. With Pauling Institute. She is investigating don’t get cleaned up, they stick species show better quality control funding from the Ellison Medical herman the animals’ “cellular surveillance” together to form aggregates that can for proteins,” she says, “my study Foundation, her research seeks to ee S By L abilities — that is, how well their lead to neurodegenerative diseases would show for the first time that generate new insights into human protein homeostasis might be an bodies can find and repair damaged like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and aging through the study of protein important mechanism in how proteins before they cause harm. other chronic illnesses associated homeostasis, dietary restriction with aging. species have evolved to have in misfolded proteins You might imagine that she would and an immunosuppressant drug Naked mole rats hold special long lifespans.” need colonies of mole rats, bats and called rapamycin. Seeking the secrets of longevity sugar gliders for her experiments. interest in aging research. While But maintaining such species in they live to ripe old ages eating labs — especially the finicky mole rat, which demands ample space for burrowing plus a daily diet of fresh fruits and veggies — is too expensive and labor intensive, she says. To prove her point, she reports that only two labs in the United States maintain colonies of naked mole rats. So instead of using live animals, she works with live cells. These she obtains from her collaborators at the

Known for their exceptional longevity, these three mammalian species — the little brown bat, the naked mole rat and the sugar glider — may hold clues to healthy human aging.

32 TERRA » FALL 20102013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 33 NEW TERRAIN // Science on the Horizon Science on the Horizon // NEW TERRAIN

New Flu Clues End-of-Life Dilemmas Vaccine strategies need Hospice workers struggle with rethinking assisted death The Oh! Zone • Far-out findings from science When flu season rolls around, hundreds of When dying people choose to hasten death thousands of Americans will get sick. Nearly with a doctor’s help, their caregivers often a quarter-million will be hospitalized. Tens of face a troubling dilemma. In particular, hospice thousands will die. — the final stop for many terminal patients — An Iceberg Roars Despite the risks, only about a third of poses an overlooked problem, OSU researchers Listening to the frozen ocean Americans will get vaccinated. Researchers report. That’s because hospice objects to now say the nation’s vaccination priorities physician-assisted death, yet most patients What is the sound of an iceberg disinte- need to shift. That’s because the groups least who choose assisted death are in hospice care. grating? Would you believe it’s as loud as likely to get the shots — kids and young adults “The conventional approach to the ques- a hundred supertankers plying the open — are the most likely to spread the germs. “In tion of legalized physician-assisted death… seas? OSU scientists were astounded most cases, the available flu vaccine could be has missed the issue of how the requirements recently when they listened to record- used more effectively and save more lives by of a new law are carried out by the primary ings of an iceberg that had formed in increasing the number of vaccinated children care-giving institution, hospice care,” says Antarctica, floated into the open ocean, and young adults,” says Jan Medlock of OSU’s philosopher Courtney Campbell, an expert in and eventually melted and broke apart. College of Veterinary Medicine. medical ethics. “Balancing core beliefs, such Scientists have dubbed this phenomenon Historically, flu prevention efforts have as compassion and non-abandonment of a an “icequake.” targeted the elderly, the chronically ill, people patient, with the new law has been difficult at “The process and ensuing sounds are with weak immunity, health-care workers — best for hospice professionals.” much like those produced by earth- in other words, those most at-risk for death Campbell and his colleagues are encour- quakes,” explains marine geologist or severe illness. But a computer model shows aging informed dialogue around topics such as Robert Dziak, who has monitored ocean that stopping flu bugs at schools and work- hospice’s mission, legal options, emotional and sounds using hydrophones for nearly places helps break the cycle of transmission to religious factors, family responsibilities and two decades. The researchers want to all populations, Medlock says. many other issues. establish the natural sound levels in the world’s oceans to better understand how noise from drilling, shipping and other human activities fits in and how it affects marine life.

Forests at Risk BITS & PIECES • News Briefs from Oregon State USDA grant fuels research on fire, drought, insects FERMENTATION FUNDS. A BETTER BRAIN. Those frustrating WORTH ITS SALT. You sprinkle it “The margin between life and death in the forest can be rather small,” Oregon’s reputation as a “senior moments” that signal on your poached eggs. You toss says OSU climate scientist Philip Mote. As wildfires widen, insects mecca for artisan beers, sagging cognition aren’t an inevi- it in your Crockpot with your pot invade and drought deepens, the razor-thin margin for tree survival wines, spirits, cheeses and table consequence of old age, an roast. But salt as a key ingredient in becomes ever thinner. breads got a $1.2 million OSU researcher says. Using gene making electronics and batteries? A five-year, $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture boost from lawmakers over the summer. therapy, a neuroscientist in the College of An OSU researcher says “yes.” Chemist will speed the search for answers — and solutions — to the ever- The Legislature’s bipartisan support for Veterinary Medicine has found a way to David Xiulei Ji has discovered a way to use growing threats to forest health. Researchers at the Oregon Climate OSU’s fermentation sciences program restore certain “subunits” of a receptor ordinary table salt in the production of Change Research Institute, which Mote directs, will use enhanced will bolster research (including a new linked to memory. “These are biological silicon nanostructures, which have huge computer models to project forest vulnerability to fire and disease distillery at OSU) on behalf of lucrative processes,” says Kathy Magnusson. potential for electronics, biomedicine and across Western forests. Their work will help inform forest manage- food products and crops such as Pinot “Once we fully understand what is going energy storage. “The use of salt as a ‘heat ment practices and minimize tree mortality as temperatures rise in noir grapes, hops, barley, milk, fruits and on, we may be able to slow or prevent scavenger’ in this process should allow coming decades. grains. “This research effort will create (cognitive decline). There may be ways the production of high-quality silicon more Oregon jobs in these growing to influence it with diet, health habits, nanostructures in large quantities at low industries,” says Jim Bernau, founder of continued mental activity or even drugs.” cost,” he says. “If we can get the cost Willamette Valley Vineyards. low enough, many new applications may emerge.”

34 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 35 NEW TERRAIN // Science on the Horizon Science on the Horizon // NEW TERRAIN

34 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 35 TERRABYTES // What They’re Doing Now Oregon State Partners with Industry // ADVANTAGE FOR BUSINESS

Peak Water Global warming likely to THE OREGON STATE Connects business with faculty expertise, student talent and shrink snowpack world-class facilities, and helps bring ideas to market and launch UNIVERSITY ADVANTAGE companies. Oregon is warming, and snow is waning. The clear, clean water that supplies many of Oregon’s cities and farms originates high in the Cascades. Stored on snowy Seedbed for Startups peaks, the water feeds rivers and aquifers that supply some of the state’s most Advantage Accelerator adds fuel to Oregon State’s entrepreneurial fire populous regions. In one key watershed, the McKenzie, Methane-powered engines. Autonomous helicopters. Online tion and research findings that might form the basis for snowpack is predicted to drop more than shopping assistants. Electricity from wastewater. These profitable companies. By tapping into the skills of Oregon half by mid-century, OSU researchers new products and the business opportunities they generate State students who are trained venture interns, Turner and project. This determination, based on are in the pipeline at Oregon State University’s Advantage Lieberman facilitate each company’s development with legal, a temperature increase just over 3.5 Accelerator. They are among 14 research concepts or spinoff marketing, financial and mentoring expertise. Their goal is to degrees Fahrenheit, could hold dire companies selected to participate in a program that spurs the turn good ideas into real-world businesses. implications for similar “low-elevation A Cheaper Cell creation of new companies from university-based research. The Advantage Accelerator is a component of the Oregon maritime snow packs” across the globe. Five of them were started by Oregon State students. State University Advantage, an educational, research and That’s because even small increases in Antifreeze shows promise in The results could lead to automotive innovation, improved commercialization initiative of the Research Office. Officials temperature can flip precipitation from solar cell manufacturing heating systems, more efficient solar cells or safe and effi- expect it to increase industry investment in Oregon State snow to rain. cient cesarean delivery of a baby in small, rural hospitals. research by 50 percent and to lead to the creation of 20 new “This is not an issue that will just affect Faster, cheaper, better. The conventional “These concepts and companies are emerging from businesses within five years. Oregon,” says OSU researcher Anne wisdom says you can’t get all three at Oregon State or the Corvallis community, and we feel good The program is also affiliated with the South Willamette Nolin, who co-authored the study with the same time. But researchers at Oregon Deep Trouble about the commercial potential of all of them,” says John Valley Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network, or RAIN, Ph.D. student Eric Sproles. “You may see State say otherwise — at least when Turner, co-director of the Advantage Accelerator. which received $3.75 million in funding from the state Legis- Lionfish get bigger, go deeper similar impacts almost anywhere around it comes to new materials for making Turner and co-director Mark Lieberman identify innova- lature in 2013. the world that has low-elevation snow solar cells. Engineers have found a less When a submersible dove into deep in mountains, such as in Japan, New expensive, less toxic, better performing waters off Florida not long ago, the Zealand, Northern California, the Andes — and surprising — substance for solar scientists aboard saw an alarming sight: Mountains, a lot of Eastern Europe and cell manufacturing: antifreeze (ethylene big lionfish, lots of them. “This was kind of the lower-elevation Alps.” glycol). Current technologies use rare and Advantage Accelerator Companies an ah-ha moment,” says OSU researcher costly chemical elements like indium and »» Bauer Labs LLC, facilitator for emergency cesareans Stephanie Green. “It was immediately gallium. »» Beet, high-efficiency solar absorber clear that this is a new frontier in the “The global use of solar energy may »» BuyBott, online shopping assistant lionfish crisis.” be held back if the materials we use to »» FanTogether, connects sports fans Lionfish, native to the Pacific Ocean, produce solar cells are too expensive »» Heating Systems, microchannel arrays for high-efficiency, are invaders threatening reef ecosystems or require the use of toxic chemicals portable heating systems »» InforeMed, health-care simulation for education in the Atlantic and Caribbean. But until in production,” says researcher Greg »» Macromolecular structure characterization, determination of scientists onboard the vessel Antipodes Herman. “We need technologies that use protein structures witnessed the extra-large, extra-fertile abundant, inexpensive materials, prefer- »» Multicopter Northwest, small autonomous helicopters fish thriving at 300 feet deep, they didn’t ably ones that can be mined in the U.S. »» NRGIndependence, long-life, utility-scale battery technology realize just how extensive the invasion This process offers that.” »» Onboard Dynamics, compressed methane for cars and trucks had become. »» PlayPulse, psychological response detection through video » A lionfish, with its festive stripes, » Valliscor LLC, continuous-flow reactors for chemical manufacturing flowing fins and spiky rays, cuts a »» Waste2Watergy, electricity from wastewater dramatic figure in a home aquarium. But Lyndsay Toll and Darren Marshall developed the concept for BuyBott »» µCHX, microscale combustor and heat exchanger in coral reefs outside its native waters, it in an entrepreneurship class at Oregon State. An online shopping is an ever-growing scourge, gobbling up assistant where customers can shop, compare and share from mul- On the Web: See more information at oregonstate.edu/advantage. tiple retailers, BuyBott is one of the first 14 startups accepted into smaller fish and reproducing at alarming the Advantage Accelerator program. (Photo: Chris Becerra) rates. Accidentally or deliberately released from aquariums a decade or more ago, lionfish have no natural predators in their new environment. They have taken full advantage. “A lionfish,” says Green, “will To discover what the Oregon State University Advantage and the Advantage Accelerator program can do for your business, eat almost any fish smaller than it is.” contact Ron Adams, Executive Associate Vice President for Research, 541-737-7722. oregonstate.edu/advantage

36 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 37 TERRABYTES // What They’re Doing Now Oregon State Partners with Industry // ADVANTAGE FOR BUSINESS

36 TERRA » FALL 2013 FALL 2013 » TERRA 37 Terra 416 Kerr Administration Building NON-PROFIT ORG US POSTAGE Oregon State University PAID Corvallis, OR 97331 CORVALLIS OR PERMIT NO. 200

In Antarctica, marine biologists have taken advantage of cracks in the ice to reach the sea below. Ice movements and jagged edges can make such openings hazardous. Here, Andrew Thurber, post-doctoral scientist in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, investigates a crack in sea ice at the Dailey Islands near the U.S. base at McMurdo. Learn more about the global implications of his research in “Through the Ice,” Page 24. (Photo: Kathleen Conlan)

38 TERRA » FALL 2013