Statistics show that the number of vehicles stolen per year has dropped by 14 percent across Oregon; however, a few cities are still experiencing high numbers.

The report comes from the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s annual Hot Spots for 2009, which rates crime activity by cities and states. Eugene is the highest-ranked Oregon city when it comes to stolen vehicles. Last year, the city had a total of 1,348 cars reported stolen. Corvallis, by comparison, only had 70. Portland and Salem were the only other Oregon cities to make the top 100 list in the nation.

Population differences can account for the large disparity. When looking at the theft rate, Eugene has about 384 vehicles stolen per 100,000 inhabitants. Corvallis only had 85 per 100,000.

“The more people in a city, the easier it is to blend in and hide,” said Sgt. Vonn Schleicher of the Oregon State Police. “That can be very appealing to criminals.”

Schleicher said that proximity to the interstate can also make a city more susceptible to crime, given the high level of traffic and ease of moving on.

Even with a decrease around the state, Schleicher says that the number of stolen vehicles around campus remains fairly consistent.

“Criminals do target university campuses,” Schleicher said. “One of the things that attracts criminals here is that the student population usually has older cars.”

There were a total of 12 vehicles stolen on campus in 2008, according to the annual crime report released by the Department of Public Safety.

“Car break-ins and stolen vehicles has been a problem on campus,” Schleicher said. “Even with a decline (across the state), it is still a problem.”

The cars targeted by thieves most often are the Honda Civic and Accord and the Toyota Camry, which are common vehicles for students to own.

“There is a pretty big market for Honda parts, which entices many car thieves,” Schleicher said. “Toyotas tend to be susceptible to shaved keys.”

Shaving keys is a technique used by car thieves where the key is filed down so that it can be used in several cars.

Officials offer advice about how to avoid becoming a victim of vehicle theft. The tips include always making sure car doors are locked, installing a car alarm or other anti-theft device and keeping valuables out of sight in the car.

“College students have laptops, GPS’ and iPods, which can be quickly taken from a car and then pawned or resold,” Schleicher said. “We try to educate the campus, but we still have students that leave these items out in the open.”

The No. 11 U. Oklahoma baseball team looks to continue its hot streak when the Sooners open play in NCAA regional action beginning Friday.

The No. 1-seeded Sooners (44-15), who had their eight-game win streak snapped in their second game of the Big 12 Championship, will take on in-state rival Oral Roberts (35-25) at 1 p.m. in the opening game of the Norman Regional at L. Dale Mitchell Baseball Park.

The game between the Sooners and the No. 4-seeded Golden Eagles will be followed by No. 2-seed Cal (29-23) taking on No. 3-seed North Carolina (36-20) in the night game at 7 p.m.

OU is making its 33rd appearance in the NCAA tournament, and fifth under head coach Sunny Golloway.

“We are playing our best baseball of the year,” Golloway said. “After the Big 12 Tournament, winning two out of three, we treated that just like a Big 12 weekend. We called it a success.”

“We were disappointed not to play in the championship game this year, but that’s just how it fell this year.”

OU has won nine of its last 10 games, with its only loss coming to Baylor in round-robin action during the conference tournament on May 28.

The Sooners are also 17-4 since April 24, when the Sooners defeated Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, to begin their season-ending hot streak. During that span, OU has outscored its opponents 192-89.

Sophomore third baseman Garrett Buechele said playing in regionals at home was one of the payoffs of a successful regular season.

“It’s one of the goals we set it out at the beginning of the year,” he said. “It’s just really nice to see us accomplish it.”

The Sooners are 22-6 overall in Norman, with three of the losses coming to No. 2 national seed Texas.

Oral Roberts is coming off its 13th-consecutive Summit League tournament title, the third-longest streak of conference championships in NCAA history.

The Golden Eagles will be led by junior shortstop Tyler Saladino, who was named the conference Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year in his first season at ORU.

Saladino finished the regular season batting .388 overall with 17 home runs, 71 RBI and 14 stolen bases. In 28 Summit League games, Saladino hit a league-best .491 while collecting at least one hit in every game.

The winner of the Norman Regional will move on to face the winner of the Charlottesville, Va., Regional, which features Virginia Commonwealth, Ole Miss, St. John’s and No. 5 national seed Virginia.

The Super Regional matchup will be held June 11-14 at an undecided location.

Redshirt senior quarterback Blake Bell tosses three touchdown passes in the second half to rally the Sooners for a 31-28 win against SEC conference rival Ole Miss at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Miss.

The game puts the Sooners one win away from meeting Florida for the SEC title in two weeks at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Seems far-fetched? Not anymore.

In fact, I’m in favor of it. Let’s look at the real picture here. If Missouri and Nebraska take all that Big 10 money and run, who is going to fill that gap and balance the North? If Colorado heads off to the Pac-10, that could make three from the North division and everyone knows that Texas will follow suit if the Big 12 starts to collapse.

Everything depends on how the Big 10 decides to expand and how the shockwave will ripple across the country. The Big 12 knows it is at the heart of all the expansion talk for all the wrong reasons.

As the Big 12 spring meetings opened Wednesday, commissioner Dan Beebe seemed to be almost begging for the conference to stay together.

Football head coach Bob Stoops said recently that OU is an attractive commodity either way to bring in schools for the Big 12 or for a move to another conference. President David Boren thinks the university is going to be in the Big 12 for years to come.

The reality is that the picture looks bleak for the Big 12 unless Missouri and Nebraska turn down millions of dollars to stay in the conference, and the conference is able to lure four high-powered schools of their own.

Who could we possibly get to replace them or add to the conference? TCU? Utah? Boise State? Geographically, there is only one possible addition or replacement.

I’m grasping at nothing and so is the Big 12. Moving us from Texas divisionally would be a disaster and as big of a rivalry as it produces, neither side of the Red River is going to be willing to give up the tradition of Dallas in October.

That only gives us one real option that I think we will have to take if it is offered, and it leads us to a quite lucrative landing spot and potentially a major step for OU; the SEC.

The SEC has nearly $3 billion in television contracts and has considered creating their own network.

The SEC is the most visible BCS conference on TV. Where is the harm in that? Imagine the extra revenue that would come to Norman from out of state, as the passionate fans of the SEC made their maiden voyages to Norman. I don’t see an issue with the additional funding that would be brought in.

Not only that, the likeliest scenario that brings us to the SEC includes Texas, Oklahoma State and Texas A&M. Adding us to the west division of the SEC and having us meet up with Arkansas, LSU and the two Mississippi schools, Ole Miss and Mississippi State.

For the Sooner fan concerned about the travel, have no fear, the furthest trip to the south is actually roughly 50 miles closer than the trip to Boulder and Colorado and equal distance to Ames and Iowa State.

I do think we would have early struggles adjusting to a new brand of athletics in the SEC, but in the end I think it could be the best thing that could come from a Big 12 conference implosion.

Imagine playing the Gators or the LSU Tigers here in Norman on a regular basis, or being able to meet up with Nebraska in a late season out-of-conference game with national championship implications at stake.

Just imagine: After Bell’s third touchdown pass with 2:12 left on the clock, the Sooner Nation begins the familiar “SEC! SEC! SEC! SEC!” chant throughout the stadium in Oxford.

For most, the tornadoes that ripped through Oklahoma on May 10 were a fright, but for Robert Palmer, director of U. Oklahoma’s Atmospheric Radar Research Center, they were an opportunity to study.

The tornadoes caused nearly $13 million in damages, but also provided unprecedented high-resolution data that Palmer’s team is currently processing and preparing for distribution.

Palmer said the close proximity of the tornadoes to the OU radar allowed for fine details of the storms to be seen.

“We’re lucky because we can finally see details of storms … and it’s because it’s really close to the radar, which is pure luck,” Palmer said.

The polarimetric radar being used at OU is unique because unlike most radar that only transmit horizontal waves, the polarimetric radar transmits both vertical and horizontal waves, Palmer said.

“You can see what type of [precipitation] it is by using polarimetric radar,” Palmer said. “The only way to do it before was to measure on the ground with a gauge and it was very cumbersome because it required many gauges on the ground.”

PRIME (Polarimetric Radar for Innovations in Meteorology and Engineering) was completed in January 2009 and is the highest-resolution polarimetric radar in the U.S.

Palmer said data would be used to improve knowledge of the tornadogenesis, the meteorological term to describe the origin of tornadoes. The data will also be used to improve computer programs that detect severe weather.

“It’s sort of the Holy Grail of tornado research,” he said.

Major League Baseball is up to bat at a crucial moment.

Armando Galarraga’s quest to pitch the 21st perfect game in MLB history screeched to a halt Wednesday evening as a result of something every sports enthusiast fears: a blown call.

And what happened in the bottom of the ninth inning at Comerica Park in Detroit wasn’t just a bad call, it was the worst-possible bad call at the worst-possible time.

Consider the events:

• Galarraga, Detroit Tigers pitcher, was on the verge of becoming the third pitcher to pitch a perfect game since May 9.

• The Venezuela-native had retired 26 of Cleveland’s batters and had one final out before reaching perfection.

• Indians short stop Jason Donald hit a grounder toward Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera.

• Cabrera fielded the ball and fired it to Galarraga, who was covering at the first-base bag for out No. 27.

• Galarraga caught the ball, tagged the base and braced himself to simultaneously exhale and celebrate as the perfect-game club’s newest member.

• Jim Joyce, first-base umpire, inexplicably ruled Donald safe and immediately sent the 17,738-person crowd in Detroit into a uniformed outrage. Not to mention the Tigers players and coaches, and baseball fans across the nation.

• Perfect game thwarted.

No, this wasn’t a blown call — this was a total lapse of judgement and an inexcusable mistake. Even die-hard Indians fans must admit Donald was clearly out.

With one call, Joyce successfully went from relatively obscure umpire to baseball’s biggest villain for the immediate future.

Upon watching the reply, Joyce asked to speak with Galarraga and offered a tearful apology. Incredibly honorable, if you ask me. It’s rare to see an umpire acknowledge a mistake, especially in such a swift manner, and I believe the umpire’s actions have reignited a controversial debate in the league: Replay.

Baseball is a game that prides itself on its dependence on the human eye, but Wednesday’s abomination strengthens the pro-replay argument.

MLB uses replay to determine whether home runs are fair or foul. And since the league implemented the technology in 2008, it seems to be working just fine. So why not expand it?

I don’t want to expand baseball’s replay system to include every pitch, every catch and every call. That would be absurd. But shouldn’t the sport strive to get the big calls — the game-changing decisions — accurate?

But, you may say, how do we define what is a big call? Simple: By using common sense.

I’m not saying to visit the replay booth when something happens at the start of a game, but in the final innings of a tight game, sneak a peak at the replay monitor when a crucial call is made. Anything that would majorly affect the outcome of said game can be quickly reviewed.

Replay doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, as every OU football fan is well aware of (don’t make me bring up the Disastrous Ducks Debacle of 2006), but it has a greater accuracy on calls like Joyce’s than the human eye, as most amateur replay officials sitting at home can attest to.

There will inevitably be an outcry for the league to overturn the botched call and award Galarraga with his rightfully earned perfect game. Will league officials listen? I’m not sure. Should they? I’m not sure.

However, what they can do is take a look at a limited expansion of MLB’s replay system and ensure Wednesday’s situation doesn’t happen again.

Consider the scenario: Joyce rules Donald safe. Realizing the magnitude of his call, he jogs over to the replay booth, deliberates with the other umpires for a few minutes, heads back to the field and throws up the “out” sign. It certainly wouldn’t be as gratifying to Galarraga as if the proper call would have been instantly after the play, but the 28-year-old pitcher would make his mark in the record books.

Baseball purists argue that replay slows an already slow game down. One of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s arguments against expanding replay is nobody wants to sit through hours of officials double checking every questionable call.

I agree. But if if a limited-replay system is used, how much would the game really be extended? Maybe 15, 20 minutes? After witnessing the travesty that occurred Wednesday night at Comerica Park, who wouldn’t sacrifice a few extra minutes in the name of accuracy?

He probably won’t start singing and dancing in the outfield, but Robert Maddox III uses music in almost every aspect of his life.

The Ohio left fielder’s numbers this season speak volumes. His .377 batting average and 78 RBIs both ranked in the top 10 of the Mid-American Conference, and his 21 home runs led the conference.

The 21-year-old junior is no stranger to the MLB Draft either, as he was drafted out of high school in the 34th round in 2007. But he decided to play in Athens and not sign a contract.

“I didn’t get a signing bonus offer by the deadline,” Maddox said. “So I was kind of forced to go to school or do something else instead of play pro ball.”

Despite all the accolades he receives on the baseball field, Maddox’s off-field life is highlighted by an unusual hobby: theater.

Growing up in Euclid, a nearby suburb of Cleveland, Maddox’s mother Sonya worked at downtown’s famous Playhouse Square. As she frequently acquired tickets to shows, Maddox began to attend performances beginning at a young age all the way through high school.

“Back home, I wouldn’t go out and do things typical high school kids did,” Maddox said. “Friday night you’d probably see me downtown at Playhouse Square seeing a performance.

“I’ll take my niece to the theater and we’ll go see Lion King. I’ll go see anything,” he said.

Maddox credits his mother as being the greatest influence in his theatrical interests.

“If she wasn’t there I would have seen half the shows I’ve seen and I wouldn’t like it as much,” Maddox said. “I have a fine appreciation for people that do that. People make fun of people who do arts, but when people ask you to go do it, you might tense up and think it’s scary.”

After he started his college career in Athens, Maddox’s passion for theater continued. Despite constant traveling with the baseball team, Maddox has watched plays put on by his fellow students on campus.

“The fine arts is not well known, but I have a great appreciation for what they do and the time they put in,” Maddox said. “They put in just as much time as any athlete.”

Maddox mentioned The Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, and Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat as his favorite musicals.

Doing something different is not new to Maddox. He was one of only a few African Americans playing high school baseball in the Cleveland area.

People often made fun of him and questioned why he was playing baseball, but Maddox said he never let outside opinions affect him.

“You can’t let that stop you from doing what helps you out,” Maddox said. “I don’t mind people knowing I like theater.”

Maddox’s love for music expands further than theater. He said he enjoys all types of music and makes playlists on his iPod for many occasions.

“I have a pregame playlist that hasn’t changed all year,” Maddox said. “Whether I have a good game or bad game ­- I listen to the same songs.”

He listens to anything from R&B to hip-hop to country to classical music. He said he uses it to clear his mind and get away from baseball.

Maddox said he isn’t nervous about the draft, and his enjoyment of theater will follow him wherever he ends up.

“I’ve had a great time here and I can’t wait to see what the future holds,” Maddox said. “I’ve done what I can and I think I’ve left it all out on the field, so I’m just going to have to wait and see what happens.”

Hypothesis: If one is completely immersed in an absolutely unrelated discipline, the individual exhibits newfound traits garnered from the experience.

Conclusion: Yes, indeed.

It is not easy for me to admit when I need improvement. The last 20 weeks I have spent writing about science allowed me to enter a field completely unrelated to the science discipline. Journalism, while not my forte, without fail, has never ceased to excite me. Using a mass of vocabulary and the right amount of diction allows one to write beautiful and eloquent sentences, much the same way chemical processes react and break bonds to form new and diverse products.

Maybe the two disciplines are not too distinct.

However, when I apply at a future nuclear plant or pharmaceutical company, writing for The Post won’t appear too high on my résumé. My future employer might be more enthralled with my studies in bioengineering and less on writing columns.

But with anything in life, it is comforting to know I am not leaving this position without some hesitation. I have gained a deeper appreciation for another profession, which reminds me about my original motives for choosing engineering.

And what drives my chemical reaction toward a life full of protons and neutrons? I am sure the very same query is pondered by thousands of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors across the country.

After some pondering I couldn’t decide where my allegiance fell, so I decided to enter the field and perform some research of my own.

Last Thursday, I sat uncomfortably in a tiny gray chair awaiting the start of what most know as Campus Crusade for Christ or 180. Most students know something about the largest Christian group on campus, so I entered with some idea of what was to occur. Knowing a shruggable amount of people involved in crusade imparted me with enough exposure to take in everything on my first visit to Morton 201.

Naturally, I figured faith pushes a great deal of people toward one direction. Song after song, speech after speech, I picked up on the underlining message of 180: Be Christ-like. Morality proves a useful catalyst when life decisions need to be made.

While I have the option to construct nuclear weapons, I would much rather spend my time in the confines of laboratories running assays for cancer research.

The next factor was an easy one – mula. It would be nice after spending four or more years in college to come out with a job. Engineering is no different. Chemical engineers are the lucky recipients of the one of the highest-paying salaries, starting at $65,700 upon entering the workforce. And I would be lying if I didn’t say I became an engineer at least in part for the pay.

As a great professor once said, “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you the things to make you happy.”

Which brings me to my final point, and the reason I embarked on my journey in journalism – I love what I do. Whether engineers are riding their bikes all the way to West Green, spending late nights in the Academic Research Center or starting their senior design project, we adore what we do.

For two quarters I was one of few non-journalism or liberal arts majors who were part of The Post. And even though I cannot recall the last time I wrote a paper for a class, I enjoyed writing columns week after week. Not only could I rekindle my long-lost love of writing, but I was also able to write on topics I knew best. This was the most enthralling part of all.

From tackling string theory, Tom Cruise and Scientology, hybrid cars and the worlds in-between, all of it has been a pleasure. And as I move on to other technical writing careers, I hope everyone has gained a greater appreciation for the wonderful world of science.

Luis Delgadillo is a sophomore studying chemical engineering and Thursday columnist for The Post.