Have you ever wanted to create a diorama for biology class or a building model for your architecture club on campus? Well fear not, the University of Oregon’s Science Library has just what you need, and it’s a called a 3D Printer.

The machine works by taking drawings made on a computer and prints them out in a 3D design with plastic. The printer, which the library received around Thanksgiving of 2013, uses a plastic called polylactic acid that comes in multiple colors and can cool almost instantly, explained Dean Walton, a UO science librarian.

“It’s not really odd for a library to have something like this,” said Walton.

The around $2,000 makerbot replicator 2 is one of the only 3D Printers on campus that is free to use by anyone UO student. All you have to do is create a design of an object with a CAD (Computer-aided design) program and the Science Library will print it out on their 3D Printer, according to Walton.

There are three primary groups of students that use the printer, explained Walton. Product designers who wish to make a model of their product, architecture students who wish to make a replica of the building they’re drawing and science students who want to make lab equipment and models for experiments.

A class on 3D Printers was introduced to the university last term, according to the UO’s Library website. Titled LIB 399 Make!—Research and 3-D Object, the class created and taught by Walton helped 20 students learn how to create designs for the printer and produce objects.

GTF Alex Bies took the class last term. He described how it was easy to learn how to use the printer and even that one of his classmates printed one of the ships from Star Wars. Bies hopes to incorporate what he learned in class with his research on cognitive Neuroscience.

“It was geared to be something you could learn whether you’re an undergraduate who had never heard of a 3D Printer to a graduate who had wrote about them in magazines from wired,” said Bies.

The first object printed off on the printer was a replica of a sabretooth salmon. It was used to help build the model of the prehistoric animal that is currently on display at the UO’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, according to OPB.

A summer camp sponsored by Walton utilized 3D Printers to create nose-cones for model rockets last August. The weeklong “Fundamentals of Rocketry” program held at Lane County’s only children’s museum, The Science Factory, was funded by the UO’s STEMCORE program, according to UO’s website.

Students from ages 9-11 learned about rockets in addition to 3D Printers and the machine’s potential future.

“The future (of 3D Printers) is very interesting. They say it’s another industrial revolution,” said Shashi Jain, Chief Technologist at Matter Compilers, a Portland based 3D Printer seller.

Jain goes on to describe how 3D Printers are catching in the consumer market on and that now is a really interesting time for the industry. Dental hardware, hearing aids, and practical kitchen goods are just a few of the things that are being made with 3D Printers.

The technology is getting to a point where it can print off bigger and better things, said Walton. It’s possible that in the future 3D Printers can use more than just plastic and create more complex products.

“If I were to print a car, it’s a giant Barbie car. However, if I can print with multiple materials, if I can print with rubber, metal, and plastic, then I’m printing something which isn’t just a model but a functioning object,” said Walton

So, if you want to create an action figure or small cup on campus, then the Science Library’s 3D Printer is just what you need.

Follow Eric Schucht on Twitter @EricSchucht

You are an agent for the office of strategic national alien planning. Your task is to complete projects focusing on code incription, computer optimization and pin collecting. Failure means obliteration of your grade because this is an assignment for one of the University of Oregon’s most innovative classes.

This is an actual assignment in CIS 410/510 Parallel Computing, an experimental course that premiered last spring was brought into existence through technology company Intel, via a $100,000 donation to the University of Oregon’s Computer Information Science department (CIS).

The class focuses on programming for devices, which use multiple processors or cores. The cores determine a computer’s speed and power, according to Daniel Ellsworth, a researcher who was involved with the construction of the class and its implementation. Most devices generally have one core, but using multiple cores in a computer can make it more efficient without the risk of overheating. Each core works together on a single task, the only problem is programing it so it works together.

“Your computer is like a five-year-old. It’s very eager to do what you tell it, but like a five-year-old it isn’t very smart,” said Ellsworth.

Ellsworth explained that parallel programming allows for all these “five-year-olds” to work together on a single task. Professor Allen Malony, the main developer and teacher for the class, describes parallel computing as having to compute the interest in a hundred bank accounts at the same time.

The 25 person class took place in a computer lab that was specifically built for the course, said Malony. The 16 computer stations were built inside a conference room in Straub Hall, a set-up that took over two weeks to construct. The room has since been reverted back to its original form.

Intel recently created what the company calls the “Intel Parallel Computing Centers” in numerous institutions across the United States. These centers are designed with the goal of improving parallel computing technology to improve computers as a whole, according to a press release from Intel.

Assistant CIS Professor Boyana Norris and Hank Childs also facilitated the program’s design and implementation. Norris explained how vital it is for future computer programmers to learn and understand parallel computing. “If you want to be one of the people creating software, you have to take a class like this,” she said.

A textbook on the subject titled Structured Parallel Programing was written by Intel and used in the class. People can visit the class website for more information on the curriculum and class structure.

The course will be made available again to students this coming spring with the hopes of offering it year round in the future.

“This is how you will be programing computers in the future. In some sense, the future is now,” said Malony.

Follow Eric Schucht on Twitter @EricSchucht

The University of Oregon finalized a 7 year agreement this week with trademark licensing agency Fermata Partners. This is the first time the UO has made a deal of this kind.

The UO trademarks, amounting to around 400 trademarks, are to begin the transition process to this licensing agency and expand their relationship with licensees in other states as soon as possible, according to Fermata Partners

Several trademarks that the University owns include: University Of Oregon, Oregon Ducks, Go Ducks, Oregon Football, Oregon Basketball, Oregon Track And Field and venue names such as Hayward Field, Autzen Stadium, Mac Court and Howe Field.

The Oregon Duck mascot itself is owned by Disney Enterprises, Inc. and is licensed to the UO, according to the University of Oregon’s website.

Oregon is the latest major university in the past four months to come to an agreement with Fermata, following Kentucky, Miami and the University of Georgia.

Fermata is also the license agency to several well-known brands such as Cabela’s, Little League Baseball and Waffle House

University of Oregon pioneered the use of zebrafish DNA to fight diseases in the 1980s, and with a new $2.5 million grant, researchers may be saving more lives today.

John Postlethwait, a biology professor at the UO, recently received $2.5 million from the National Institute of Health to fund Postlethwait’s research on Fanconi Anemia (FA) at the University of Oregon. According to the Institute of Health’s website, out of 68,285 research grant applications submitted to the National Institute of Health in 2014, only 21% were accepted and funded.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute defines the disease as a “rare, inherited blood disorder that leads to bone marrow failure.” The average lifespan of someone with FA is between 20-30 years.

The grant will help fund Postlethwait’s work for the next four years. The majority of the money will go towards paying salaries for people who conduct research, DNA sequencing and zebrafish husbandry.

“John is one of many researchers on campus that show us how the world works and how to make it better,” said Bill Cresko, an associate professor at the University’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution and director of Cresko Laboratory.

The first year of research will be spent comparing diseased and healthy DNA in order to discover differences between them. The next phase is drug screening in order to find a substance that can repair the damaged DNA. If his team is successful, then they will conduct the same tests on mice with the hope of one day using it on people.

Zebrafish are the model organism used in this study. It all has to do with the potentially revolutionary new way of testing diseased genes. The traditional way of identifying proteins to find small molecules that affect the disease is very time consuming. This new method involves looking at the whole organism to see the differences between healthy and damaged DNA.

“We can understand when a developmental genetic system is broken and we might be able to understand the genes and what they do, but we don’t know how to fix them,” Cresko said. “What John and his colleagues have done is to find ways to apply small molecules and look at how these zebra fish that have mutations and see if these molecules will negate the effects.”

As the leader of the project, Postlethwait will coordinate with research teams from Germany and Texas who are conducting the same experiments on zebra fish, except with melanoma instead of FA.

Zebrafish are ideal research subjects for this experiment as they are easy to breed, small enough so it’s simple to look at the whole organism, convenient to apply the drugs by placing it their water and are affected by FA in the same manner as humans, Cresko said. The UO is an ideal place for this research to take place because it is home to the Zebrafish International Resource Center.

Peter von Hippel, a retired professor and former board member of the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund, called the approach both “novel and promising.”

“As a knowledgeable bystander, I look forward to seeing their results,” said von Hippel.

Follow Eric Schucht on Twitter @EricSchucht

An $810,000 grant has been awarded to the University of Oregon’s Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Careers through Outreach, Research and Education, or STEM CORE. It will provide funding over a three year period to support several 3^rd through 8^th grade teachers in Lane County.

The goal of the program is to support teachers from high need schools with professional development activities. This money will go toward training that is designed to help teachers to create projects that will engage students in real world and career contexts.

STEM CORE’s mission is to produce a “broader and deeper pool” of teachers in the STEM areas in Oregon. STEM CORE works with education faculty, K-12 educator, science researchers, mathematicians, STEM industry and government partnerships to develop new models for student learning and engagement.

Follow Eric Schucht on Twitter @EricSchucht

Researchers with the University of Oregon have recently conducted an experiment that could lead to improvements in the efficiency of solar energy.

A seven-member research team used a controlled sequence of laser pulses to observe the interaction of light with resting electrons in an experiment this month.

The spectroscopy experiment was conducted for the purpose of trying to have the photons generate multiple electrons instead of just one, a process known as multiple exciton generation (MEG).

Solar cells work by absorbing particles of sunlight, which are made up of photons. Each captured photon usually generates one free electron which makes electricity. If more energy is generated from less light, solar panels can become far more effective, according to Andrew H. Marcus, head of the UO department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

While the experiment won’t revolutionize solar technology on its own, it can inspire others to conduct similar experiments into this field of research, Marcus said in the UO News article.

The project came about when Lund University Professor Tonu Pullerits approached Marcus about adopting their spectroscopic system to look at solar material. Khadga J. Karki, a researcher of Pullerits’, traveled to the UO and teamed up with Marcus and Professor Mark C. Lonergan to reconfigure the equipment.

Marcus, Lonergan and Pullerits wrote a paper on the experiment and uploaded online by the journal Nature Communications.

It was co-authored along with UO doctoral student Julia R. Widom, Professors of Lund University and Joachim Seibt and UO graduate student Ian Moody.

The National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy supported the project.

Follow Eric Schucht on Twitter @EricSchucht

“You never forget that the bodies are someone”, Jacqlyn Hyler says, “but you don’t feel that you’re doing something personal to them.”

Hyler, a graduate teaching fellow with the Department of Human Physiology at the University of Oregon, teaches Human Cadaver Dissection, where undergraduate students can operate on and dissect real donated human bodies.

“It’s one of my favorite places to be,” said Hyler. “My husband even proposed to me in the lab.”

It’s a very popular course in the second most popular major at UO: 9% of degrees awarded in 2013 were in human physiology last year.  The program has grown from 300 to 1100 students in the last ten years.

Last year, over 160 students applied for this specific course, with only 60 being admitted.

The “donors” are dissected by students in order for them to learn about the human structure. The Human Anatomy Lab allows for students to learn about human structures by actually looking at them.

“It’s intimidating at first, but it’s an incredible experience,” said Sara Shontz, a senior Human Physiology major.

The lab receives its donors from a body donation program at the Western Health Science University. Each spring, a group of graduate students travels to the school to pick up 8 donors and drop off the remains of the donors from the previous year.

“For me, the weirdness left after I had opportunity to have a physical interaction with the donors,” said Hyler.

Shontz explained how her class was divided into four groups of five people. Throughout the course, the groups dissected the donor bodies and examined different body systems.

While any student can apply for the class as long as they meet the course prerequisites, priority registration is given to human physiology majors.

The college program is one of a few that allows for students to get hands on experience with human biological systems. Even more unusual, the program allows for undergraduates to enroll. This type of training is generally reserved for higher end programs or medical schools.

Director of the Human Anatomy Laboratory and Undergraduate Advising Jon Runyeon described how programs of this kind that allow for undergraduate students to participate are “rare.”

“It’s an unparalleled opportunity to learn real human anatomy,” said Runyeon.

Hyler’s advice to those interested in the taking a course at the Human Physiology Lab is to get hands-on.

“For me, interacting with the bodies sooner than later allowed me to continue to make more progress and allowed for any misconceptions that I had to be erased,” she said.

Follow Eric Schucht on Twitter @EricSchucht

It’s one of the most popular events held at Willamette Hall. While the home of the University of Oregon’s Physics Department is known for hosting science lectures throughout the year, it is the building’s electronic waste drop-off service that’s drawing a crowd.

The department provides a space 3-4 times a year for people to drop off electronic waste or “e-waste.” The electronics are housed there until Campus Operations picks them up and delivers them to NextStep Recycling, an independent organization located in Eugene, for proper disposal.

According to Oregon’s Electronics Recycling Law, it is illegal to dispose of televisions, computers, laptops or monitors in a landfill. The aim behind the law is to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills and to ensure valuable metals get reused and recycled.

The building’s manager Patty Valenzuela has described the event as very popular and now she wishes to make the program more available to the occupants of all the buildings but not all buildings have the staff available to organize such a drop off event.

While the service is able to attract staff participants from other University departments, it is one of the few opportunities for University students to drop off their e-waste on campus. The University is known for striving towards a zero waste policy, but it lacks the ability to allow students to drop off any of their personal e-waste on campus.

“In general, the UO handles UO property only and student personal electronics – basically anything with a chord… cell phones, cameras, computers and beyond, appliances as well – must be handled with through personal means,” said Karyn Kaplan, the Zero Waste Program Manager.

The student group “Climate Justice League” has tried to change this by getting receptacles that students and staff could drop e-waste off at. The group’s “Recycle E-Waste Campaign” hopes to have e-waste receptacles available to students by the end of Spring Term 2014.

“They were trying to do some type of grant proposal to get these receptacles that were almost like a mail box that students and staff could drop items off in it,” said Molly Lockhart, a Property Management Specialist with the UO Business Office.

Lockhart goes on to describe how their e-waste disposal station that the group ran briefly back in February of this year was met with minimal successes, stating that they only collected “some batteries and a printer.”

If an e-waste drop off box were to be installed on campus, it would have to be secure to protect electronics that have not had their memory erased. Otherwise, anyone could take whatever has been left inside and have access to any information on the device.

“You need a very secure box if you want to do a generalized [e-waste] collection,” said Sarah Grimm, a Waste Reduction Specialist with Lane County.

For many living off campus, it would be difficult to haul heavy electronics onto University property for drop off. Moreover, Lockhart said that having e-waste receptacles on campus housing properties would be desired by the residents of students living there.

“I think that within the student housing areas, [it] might be a good idea if there are receptacles there.”

Regardless of how you dispose of e-waste, it is important that every individual does so. Lane County has six available locations to drop off e-waste, with the closet to campus being that of Glenwood Central Receiving Station. Other nearby places to drop off e-waste include Next Step Recycling and Garten Services.

“Everything that goes in the garbage today instead of into the economy is going to negatively impact the rest of their future,” said Grimm.

Follow Eric Schucht on Twitter @EricSchucht

Lillis’ floor was covered with lying-down students for 14 minutes on Dec. 5.

The “die-in” was a protest staged by the University of Oregon Multicultural Center at the Lillis Business Complex in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in the killing of Eric Garner.

A group of about 100 students walked into the building at approximately 11:45 a.m. and lay on the floor in a moment of silence.

“The entire bottom floor was full of people,” said Tarik Richardson, one of the presidents of the Black Student Union.

Garner’s death and the ensuing court decision has sparked a national outcry as protests continue in Ferguson over the Mike Brown decision. All of the people present at the protest were asked not to take any photos or videos. Instead, Center the Margins Media, the UO Multicultural Center’s Media Group, took photos.

Representatives from the university’s Black Student Union were also in attendance.