It’s best to let the room air out before entering. Boxes of plastic bags line the shelves of this old garage. In the center are two glass fish tanks covered with a plastic tarp and the musky animal scent grows stronger as you rip it off to reveal the specimen: an arctic fox. With flesh stripped away by hundreds of beetles, the bones will soon be ready for examination by Pat O’Grady, one of the curators of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History’s many collections.

This is just one of the many ways the curators of the various museum collections obtain and prepare their specimens for study. Students at the University of Oregon are allowed to assist researchers in their preparations through various volunteer programs.

The museum owns several collections comprised of various fossils, rocks and bones, all used for research by the museum and the geology and anthropology departments. While all these collections are with the museum, each is maintained by different departments. The bones are either obtained on archaeological digs or donated by groups such as U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, O’Grady said.

When O’Grady receives an animal for the collection, he and his student volunteers, remove the fur or feathers form the carcass along with several of the internal organs. He then places it in a glass container and has his colony of beetles do the rest.

Madonna Moss’s museum collection on wildlife of the northwest coast, like O’Grady’s collection, uses bones to help identify specimens found on various digs.

These bones enlighten researchers about animal migration due to climate change or what hunter gatherer societies consumed.

A great way specimens are unearthed are when natural disasters occur, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, Moss said.

“We can learn things about animal distribution that biologist don’t know,” said Moss.

Moss collects soil samples from locations, such as digs in Alaska, and uses a screening technique to locate small fish bones that otherwise would be lost. Students help to identify the bones and label them.

For animals that are larger, they are handed over to Frances White with the Primate Osteology Research Lab for preparation. Students and researchers use a crock pot like device to boil the animal’s flesh in order to make it easier to remove from bones. The lab has even worked with a cougar carcass, which got the lab many complaints from people in the hallway due to the smell, said White.

“It’s just a smelly, smelly, job,” said Moss.

Moss’s collection has over 500 bones and is stored in her lab at the anthropology department, while O’Grady‘s is stored in an unusual place. His collection of 15,000 specimens of mammal and bird bones is stored in what used to be a house before it came under university ownership. A copy machine resides in what used to be the kitchen said O’Grady.

“I love this place,” said O’Grady.

Students who are interested in animal anatomy can volunteer at any one of these collections and labs. Email the collections curator for more information on how to get involved.

The future of music is here. An alternative to wooden guitars and basses has been developed in Eugene.

Made out of carbon fiber, the design allows for lighter, stronger and acoustically different instruments from their wooden counter parts. The products come from University of Oregon alumni, Steven Mosher whose current career is far different from the one he originally set out for.

A UO graduate from the class of 1974, Mosher was an architecture landscape major. After working in landscaping for several years, Mosher made a career change. It was his love of surfing that caused him to look at his surf board more closely. With a passion for product design, Mosher said he began to look at the plastic it was made of in a new light.

“I was heavily influenced by design, and I was heavily influenced by being a wild and crazy beach kid,” Mosher said.

Mosher dove into the world of plastic and carbon design and discovered the musical properties of carbon fiber. He soon crafted a base neck out of the substance. Moses Carbon Graphite, named after Mosher’s wife nickname for him, was founded in 1981, according to the company’s website. The company is located locally here in Eugene and is fairly unknown to students.

“I think the lighter the guitar and the faster the action is, the easier to play,” said Gabe Gomez, a bass player and student at the UO, about the carbon fiber instruments.

As company founder and owner, Mosher has a business mind, not out of need, but necessity. His love of music and design is what drives him and his business forward, Mosher said.

“I like developing process, that’s what I like doing most. I don’t mind the entrepreneurial spirit,” Mosher said.

Carbon fiber is a tool to Mosher, not an art. It’s the sound it creates that makes him experiment with it, Mosher said.

“It would mean nothing to me if I couldn’t produce good sound,” Mosher said about carbon graphite.

While Mosher successfully made his mark in the music industry, he knows there are others who have not been so lucky and is grateful for what he has achieved.

“I feel very fortunate, even though [it’s] not like I’m a wealthy man out there like Bill Gates. I’m doing fine. What I can say is that it’s very difficult to get involved the music industry right now from scratch, just in practical terms,” Mosher said.

Others believe that he has done a great job in a tough industry.

“I think he’s made a go of it in an area that’s tough,” Don Lataske, a senior instructor of jazz and blues music, said.

While Mosher may spend a good deal of time designing products and running his company, he still finds time to perform live with his group of friends at local breweries and night clubs, Mosher said.

Moses Carbon Graphite will soon launch a line a speakers made out of carbon fiber and plastic. More information available at the link here.

Behind the locked doors of the Doe Research Lab is a place that few students get to visit. With over four thousand different variations of fruit flies, student researchers study these insects to better understand the human body.

The average lifespan of a fruit fly is ten days. Ten days is all it takes for a larva to live out its entire existence. As these insects grow and develop, so too do the graduate and postdoc students who study them.

“We don’t study Drosophilia (fruit flies) to study fruit flies. We study Drosophilia to understand how all of Mother Nature works as best as she’ll allow us to do that,” Dylan Farnsworth, one graduate student with the Doe Lab said.

The Doe Lab looks at various genes and phenotypes to apply that information to humans. Fruit flies are easy to genetically manipulate and allow students to get a closer look at the world of genetics, Mubarak Hussain Syed, a Post Doc at the lab said.

“We can mutate any gene, any cell, any time,” Syed said.

Graduate students work at a lab between four to five years to become a postdoc, who also work at a lab from four to five years with hopes of running a lab of their own one day, said Syed. The relationship between the two groups is one of mentor-ship, with lots of guidance on equipment usage and experimentation.

“It’s a lot like being a mechanic in some ways, it’s a lot of tinkering with things,” said Farnsworth.

At the lab, researchers have the ability to add a special gene found in certain jellyfish to make different parts of the flies glow in order to better see them, Graduate Student Mathew Clark said.

Flies are traded between labs like sports cards, Clark said. If a lab publishes a research paper using a distinct type of fruit fly, labs like the Doe Lab can request the flies for experiments of their own. The flies are stored in small vials filled with a cornmeal-like substance that sustains 100-200 bugs.

Syed, and other researchers like him, are dedicated to the lab of which they devote so much of their time to. Syed is a special case, as he will even stay overnight at the lab to finish a project.

“For me it is fun. I never go home, I stay here. Weekends, Thanksgiving, Christmas, I am here. Because I like to do it,” Syed said.

Just like the fruit flies, the student researchers hope to contribute to science and hopefully help humans gain more knowledge on the function of their neurons and brain, said Syed.

“As a scientist, people grow at different times, and it happens in different ways,” said Farnsworth.