In this episode of Spotlight on Science, Arts and Culture Writer Frankie Lewis speaks with Jordan Bailey, the president of the UO Biomechanics club. Within their conversation are the specifics on the prosthetic arm the club is 3D printing, as well was some more information on the field of biomechanics.

Spotlight on Science is a series from the Emerald Podcast Network designed ot spark conversations across disciplines with researchers at the University of Oregging in researchers to discuss their work in a way that is understandable to everyone.

Music in this episode is “Zombie Disco” by Six Umbrellas.

This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

The post Podcast: Spotlight on Science: 3D prosthetics with the UO Biomechanics club appeared first on Emerald Media.

Jenny Kroik, illustrator, painter and University of Oregon alum, never expected to hear back from the New Yorker when she emailed the magazine her cover illustration ideas.

“I started doing fake New Yorker covers,” Kroik said. “I would just make a painting for fun and then I’d slap the logo on it. And people were like, ‘I thought it was real, you should send them stuff.’”

Two New Yorker covers later, Kroik can say she has checked that bucket list item off her list. Her illustrations, currently on display in the 2nd floor of the Erb Memorial Union, depict scenes of everyday New York City life. But, what makes her work worthy of the New Yorker cover is her playful, lively style. Not only is Kroik focused on people, but she is intrigued by city-goers’ reactions to life in general.

Kroik said art museums supply some of her best inspiration. “I really find myself interested in how people consume the art,” Kroik said. “[I’m] a painter so [I’m] curious to see how people react to paintings.”

Kroik said Soviet Art has influenced her style. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, she said she draws from the angular, architectural forms of constructivist art of the early 1900s. Kroik combines constructivist ideals with children’s book illustrations — an unexpected but effective combination.

“I think in that era there wasn’t a distinction between illustrators and fine artists,” Kroik said. “So if you make art, that’s your job in society. That’s an attitude I drew a lot of inspiration from. In the industry, you’d say ‘I’m an illustrator,’ but I feel like it is part of the same thing so it doesn’t matter.”

Before coming to UO for graduate school, Kroik was immersed in her undergraduate studies at the Art Institute of Boston, Kroik began solidifying her illustrative technique. It was there that she also discovered her passion for animation. Kroik said that she still animates some of her illustrations into short videos or gifs because that process helps refine her illustrations.

“I definitely think like an animator,” Kroik said. “I’ll draw faster or do multiple frames or work differently, like with a storyboard, even for my one-off illustrations.”

After her time in Boston, Kroik said she was suddenly perplexed by a nagging question: why paint? For her, grad school was that exploration.

“I think that grad school was a really good place to deconstruct things,” Kroik said. “It was like operating on your art and seeing what’s inside.”

During her graduate studies at UO, Kroik experimented with different styles, mediums and procedures. Her work from grad school looked nothing like the figurative illustrations she produces today, as Kroik experimented with collage, installations, video — a virtual kitchen sink of mediums and approaches. One experiment has stuck with her, though: printmaking.

“I think printmaking is really great for everyone because it’s a surprise,” Kroik said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. Monotypes are something I love doing. I haven’t had too much access to printmaking studios since I moved to the city, but I like to do homemade monotypes with plexiglass and stuff like that.”

Kroik described her graduate school work as the emotion beneath the surface of her illustrations. She also considered the appropriate settings for displaying her illustrations.

“I realized that the gallery space is actually not the right outlet for my images,” Kroik said. “They work well as something more instantaneous, something you see like on your phone, something like a daily journal type thing. I love going to galleries, but I hate exhibiting in galleries.”

Kroik said she aspires to support herself primarily as an illustrator — a challenge all artists must face. But in the meantime, she does have a more immediate goal: befriending Tom Hanks.

“I don’t know why, but I follow him on Instagram,” Kroik said. “He takes these photos of gloves on the street. I think he lives in New York City, so it would be really fun if I could just befriend him and go for a walk with him and sketch him while he’s taking photos of gloves.”

A previous version of the story misquoted Kroik as saying Tom Hanks takes photos of globs. The quote has been corrected to say that Hanks takes pictures of gloves.

To see more of Kroik’s work, visit her website (https://www.jennykroik.com/) and follow her on Instagram (@jkroik)

Follow Franklin Lewis on Twitter (@flewis_1)

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In this installment of Spotlight on Science, arts and culture writer Frankie Lewis speaks with journalist Becca Cudmore. Within their conversation are the struggles of being a science journalist, Cudmore’s work for Audobon and Nautilus, and a brief preview of her upcoming story on Cougar’s in the Pacific North West.

Spotlight on Science is a series from the Emerald Podcast Network designed ot spark conversations across disciplines with researchers at the University of Oregging in researchers to discuss their work in a way that is understandable to everyone.

Music in this episode is “Zombie Disco” by Six Umbrellas.

This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

The post Podcast: Spotlight on Science: Science journalism with Becca Cudmore appeared first on Emerald Media.

The University of Oregon class of 1897 might find UO’s current campus unrecognizable. Large-scale building projects and student enrollment increases have whisked away memories of the university’s modest beginnings. Once the central operating building of the university, Deady Hall today houses parts of the math department and other assorted classes. The entire quad that Deady and Villard Hall overlook — the heart of early UO — is now scarcely utilized.

But the class of 1897 would recognize one landmark — their class tree. Perched on the north edge of “old campus” is a relatively unknown treasure of university and state history: an up to 400-year-old white oak tree.

“Whitokate oaks moved into the valley somewhere between 11,000 and 8,000 years ago,” said Bart Johnson, head of the landscape architecture department at UO. “They were here at the time the first Native people arrived here. They are incredibly important parts to the food web.”

According to Johnson, who has done extensive research on the species, the Old Campus white oak is at least 250 years old and could be over 400. Such a long lifespan is normal for a white oak tree; Johnson said the oldest recorded white oak in Oregon was around 650 years old.

These ageless wonders were once commonplace. Johnson said that up until 1850, 60 percent of the Willamette Valley was oak savannah — open grasslands that allowed oak trees to thrive. Since then, most of Oregon’s oak savannahs were converted to agricultural fields or swallowed up by Douglas fir forests, making the once dominant white oak a rarity today. Johnson said the preservation of white oaks and their corresponding habitat is critical, as the trees serve many other native organisms, including birds, squirrels and insects.

“Their wide-spreading branches are festooned with lichens and mosses which are occupied by insects, so it’s a food web source point,” Johnson said. “They find even now that some of these individual oaks that are just stuck in the middle of an ag field are still very important for birds.”

Oak trees are versatile; they can grow in thin or thick soil, dry or wet climates. Oaks can also adjust their growth rate based on the amount of environmental stress they’re under. This can make dating white oak trees difficult, as a young tree growing under low-stress conditions may be much larger than an older tree under more stress. Despite their resilience to shifting growing conditions, white oaks are still in competition with other trees.

“As soon as you start getting other trees like Doug firs [growing] overtop,” Johnson said, “[the white oak’s] canopy begins to fall apart. You lose that structure and you simply can’t recover it.”

Johnson and his colleagues are working to identify the best remaining oak habitats in the Willamette Valley and are developing ways to restore them before the oaks completely disappear.

“A lot of our work is about thinning out and removing the trees that have grown in around these oaks creating new, open grassland habitat where we can recruit young oaks that can fill in those canopies,” Johnson said.

When the old campus oak ultimately reaches the end of its life, campus will undoubtedly lose a piece of university heritage. But the tree will provide just as much — if not more — ecological value in death as in life.

“There’s been research done that’s shown a dead tree has more life in it than a living tree,” Johnson said. “Once it dies it becomes inhabited by fungus, beetles, bacteria, insects. Squirrels are living inside of it. You end up with more biomass in a dead tree than a live one.”

The post Hundreds of years later, UO’s oldest tree stands the test of time appeared first on Emerald Media.

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano drew headlines following its recent eruption on Friday. But the Pacific Northwest is a hotbed for geologic activity, too. The Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington, the John Day Fossil Beds of Eastern Oregon and the Columbia Gorge are emblematic of the region’s tumultuous geologic history. Mount St. Helens, however, is probably the landmark that first comes to people’s minds given its eruption in 1980.

The eruption attracted droves of earth scientists to research the active volcano. Nearly 40 years later, scientists such as Dr. Brandon Schmandt, a geophysicist and seismologist at the University of New Mexico, are able to accurately map the inner workings of the volcano. Dr. Schmandt will present the findings he and his colleagues discovered about the “magmatic plumbing” beneath the volcano. The talk is on Tuesday, May 7, at 3 p.m. at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

“If you went around the perimeter of the Pacific [Ocean], you could find many volcanic systems that have a lot of similar attributes to [Mt.] St. Helens,” Schmandt told the Emerald. “Why it stands out and why it’s been a focus lately is simply that it’s most active volcano in the Pacific Northwest and there are a lot of people who live near it.”

Mount St. Helens and the entire Cascade mountain range is a product of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. This is an area off the Oregon-Washington coast, beneath the ocean, where the Juan de Fuca plate is sliding under the larger North America continental plate. Besides generating earthquake-producing friction, the sliding Juan de Fuca plate pulls water, sediment and various reactive minerals with it; an explosive combination for volcanoes.

“Those are things that we would see at the surface normally but [the plate movement] drags them to depths where they’re not stable,” Schmandt said. “Those end up lowering the melting point of the mantle. Then the melt that’s created by that sinking flap rises up under the overriding plate — the overriding plate being what you guys live on.”

While Schmandt said scientists cannot forecast eruptions, volcanoes will give off warning signs,  such as steam venting or small lava flows. But these signs are sometimes red herrings.

“I think we would see indicators ahead of time if St. Helens were to start ramping up toward a new eruption,” he said. “We’re not seeing those indicators — at least not very strong ones right now.”

Schmandt was selected to participate in the National Science Foundation program GeoPRISMS, which brings together earth scientists from different disciplines to examine a specific area of the world. A few years back, the Cascadia Subduction Zone was chosen as a site of interest. Schmandt hopes his research on Mount St. Helens, combined with his colleges’ work on other areas of the subduction zone could provide a case study for examining other volcanic regions in the world.

“What we learn will be important regionally because it is a very active volcano in the Pacific Northwest,” Schmandt said. “But it’s also applicable more broadly because there are tons of volcanoes that are very similar in many respects to Mount St. Helens.”

As for the lecture, Schmandt wants to provide attendees with a modern view of Mount St. Helens and where it fits into global volcanic processes and hazards.

“We have a great depth of information,” Schmandt said. “In a way [Mount St. Helens] is a place to sort of keep doubling down and say, ‘Well, let’s zoom in more and more,’ because these are pretty complex systems.”

Dr. Schmandt’s lecture will begin at 3 p.m. in the Museum of Natural and Cultural History Galleria on Tuesday, May 7. The talk is included with regular museum admission, free for UO students.

Follow Franklin Lewis on Twitter (@flewis_1)

The post Science Pick of the Week: Visiting geologist discusses the inner workings of Mt. St. Helens ahead of talk at MNCH appeared first on Emerald Media.

The Spring term sun is here, which means lounging on one of the many campus lawns is suddenly the fashionable thing to do. And what better way to enjoy the springtime heat than with a refreshing ice cream treat. While Prince Pucklers is the established location when it comes to off-campus ice cream, a new option has emerged for students craving their frozen fix on campus.

Dip It, a pop-up ice cream and dessert shop, opened for business in the EMU on April 10, 2018. Occupying the space previously filled by Red Wagon Creamery, Dip It takes a more customizable, niche approach to desert snacks. Customers can begin their order with a vanilla ice cream bar, an ice cream sandwich (flavors: chocolate, birthday cake or strawberry), a frozen banana or a rice krispy-style bar. Once dipped in chocolate, an array of toppings are available: various styles of sprinkles, almonds, toffee bits, chocolate chips and more.

The Emerald investigated whether Dip It has the legs to become a go-to campus staple.

The toasted almond topping complemented the smooth chocolate coating on an ice cream sandwich from Dip It. (Franklin Lewis/Emerald)

Presentation

A simple operation behind the counter produces an aesthetically pleasing delicacy. Each item is presented in a cleverly designed tray and each tray has a notch taken out of its side to allow the stick protruding from the treat to rest flat. This allows the chocolate dip to dry and harden without dripping down the side of the bar or sandwich.

This subtle but ingenious detail also allows for any additional toppings to set within the chocolate membrane of the bar or sandwich. Expect Dip It items draped with colorful sprinkles to pop up on Instagram stories soon.

Taste

Ice cream taste can be difficult to evaluate as ice cream is made and served in different ways. For instance, eating soft serve ice cream from Dairy Queen is inherently a different experience than having a cone from Prince Pucklers.

Dip It’s ice cream is decent, but certainly, nothing to write home about. The vanilla bar is, well, vanilla. It complements the chocolate dip, but ultimately the dip is not enough to distract from the flat, neutral flavor.

The ice cream sandwich is much more appetizing — the custom toasted almond topping deserves some credit. Nuts and ice cream is often a lazy, forced pairing. But in this case, the smoky, earthy flavor of almonds work excellent with the chocolate dip and sandwich texture.

Price

An ice cream sandwich of any flavor costs $4.50, a vanilla bar costs $3.50, a frozen banana costs $2.50 and a krispy bar costs $2.00. Chocolate dip plus one additional topping is free, two additional toppings are 50 cents, three additional toppings is 75 cents.

Dip It is a new ice cream pop-up in the EMU. (Sarah Northrop/Emerald)

Dip It is not a value play, as the portion sizes are moderate. But for the convenience of location and rapid service, the price range is fair.

Ultimately, patrons should approach Dip It with an open mind and low expectations. It won’t change your life, but it might take that 80-degree spring term Friday from good to great.

Located on the basement floor of the EMU, Dip It is open Monday through Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Follow Franklin Lewis on Twitter (@flewis_1)

The post Review: Dip It provides students with customizable frozen treats appeared first on Emerald Media.

In this episode of Spotlight on Science, arts and culture writer Frankie Lewis speaks with Dr. David McCormick from the Institute of Neuroscience. The two discuss Dr. McCormick’s research in decision making and his studies of the brain with Tibetan monks, as well as his motivation for studying neuroscience and the incredible popularity of his dog.

Spotlight on Science is a series from the Emerald Podcast Network designed to spark conversations across disciplines with researchers at the University of Oregon, bringing in researchers to discuss their work in a way that is understandable to everyone.

Music in this episode is “Zombie Disco” by Six Umbrellas.

This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

The post Podcast: Spotlight on Science: Neuroscience and Tibetan monks with Dr. David McCormick appeared first on Emerald Media.

Jeremy Wade, expert fisherman and biologist, has turned over nearly every stone when it comes to freshwater fishing. Known best for his legendary catches on the Animal Planet show, “River Monsters,” which concluded its ninth and final season last year, Wade has traversed the world’s rivers for nearly 35 years in search of fearsome aquatic predators. But as his travels accumulated, he noticed a troubling trend: The big fish were becoming harder and harder to catch. In an interview with the Emerald, Wade said a trip to the Amazon River to catch the illustrious arapaima was particularly alarming.

“I was expecting [arapaimas] to be hard to find, hard to catch,” Wade said. “But what I wasn’t expecting was to find that they had actually been wiped out from huge areas of the Amazon.”

In his new show, “Mighty Rivers,” which premieres in the United States on Sunday, April 8 at 6 p.m. PST on Animal Planet, Wade investigates the disappearance of various apex river predators. Throughout this investigation, he examines the ecological health of the Ganges, Amazon, Yangtze, Mississippi, Danube and Zambezi rivers.

Wade performing a ritual with a local holy man in the Ganges River. Varanasi, India. (Courtesy of Animal Planet)

“We take water for granted, we take rivers for granted,” Wade said. “Rivers are very forgiving — they’ll take a lot of abuse.”

But that abuse has reached a critical level, according to Wade. Toxic chemical runoff from factories and other areas of industry have many river ecosystems at their breaking point. He said he hopes “Mighty Rivers” can bring awareness to the plight the world’s rivers are under.

“[The plight] doesn’t just matter to fish, it doesn’t just matter for people who like catching fish,” Wade said. “All the important, delicate reactions that happen in our bodies — they are all mediated by water. The water cycle flows through each of us. It’s in our interest that that water is in good condition.”

A challenge for Wade was turning the investigation into compelling television. He said that because TV is so visual, translating an abstract subject like river health into something that people can see and hear was difficult. Therefore, “Mighty Rivers” is built around the dramatic journey Wade takes exploring each river. Wade and his team dealt with several tense situations, including being kicked out of Zimbabwe in the midst of filming by the Zimbabwean government.

“It was really ironic,” Wade said. “We were actually going to show a couple of good news stories about the Zambezi in Zimbabwe. We couldn’t show them because we were kicked out.”

Wade and his crew also had a close call flying in a small, prop-engine plane over the Brazilian jungle. Wade said as the flight went on, an intense storm began to develop. When they reached their landing spot — a muddy airstrip in a remote town run by a local mining gang — the storm had engulfed the plane. Wade said the pilot made a miraculous dive through a break in the clouds to land safely.

“There was this collective sigh of relief when we got down on the ground,” he said.

Wade said the success of “River Monsters,” helped immensely during his investigations for “Mighty Rivers” because he was immediately recognized in many of the communities he visited around the world. Therefore, he did not need to waste time explaining who he was or why he was there. The model for “River Monsters” however, was more straightforward: Wade caught the biggest fish he could find.

“The whole success of ‘River Monsters’ was we showed people animals they didn’t know existed,” Wade said. “I think if you’re just showing some fish that’s just a few inches long, just a generic fish, people shrug their shoulders and go, ‘so what?’”

Jeremy Wade relaxing on prow of a boat in the Danube Delta, Romania. (Courtesy of Animal Planet)

While he appreciates the reputation “River Monsters” has given him, Wade said he had no idea the show would last as long as it did.

“People say it’s just a fishing show — which it is — but I think it is more than that. It is a type of natural history program.”

Previously a secondary school teacher in his home country, the United Kingdom, Wade said he has always had a passion for opening people’s eyes to lesser-known aspects of life. According to Wade, freshwater fish are understudied by the scientific community, partially because they are difficult to observe. Due to the silt and sediment transported by rivers, visibility is lower compared to many ocean environments.

“In something like a coral reef you’ve got a lot of really pretty, nice fish,” Wade said. “ I’ve got nothing against them, but I find pretty fish can get a bit boring after awhile. Whereas in freshwater you get these things with tentacles hanging off them all over the place. You get fish that generate electricity. There’s just more variety and more weirdness, and people like that.”

As for any advice he would give to an aspiring biologist, Wade said one should follow his or her own interests and enthusiasm rather than what others believe they should do. He also said to be prepared for failure.

“When things work out, it always much more meaningful if you’ve failed before,” Wade said. “I’ve failed to find a job of any description for many years, so to finally get the one that I wanted means that much more.”

Check out the Emerald’s previous coverage of “River Monsters” here and the official “Might Rivers” show page here.

Follow Franklin Lewis on Twitter (@flewis_1)

The post Jeremy Wade talks river pollution, ‘River Monsters’ success ahead of his new show ‘Mighty Rivers’ appeared first on Emerald Media.

Examples of regenerative medicine sound like science fiction: 3D tissue printing, regrowing tissue and stem cell therapy. But Dr. Robert Guldberg, incoming director of the Knight Campus and current executive director of the bioengineering institute at Georgia Tech, will tell you that many such techniques are not only real, but also save lives.

“It’s actually a field that’s 25 years old now,” Guldberg said. “And that may be surprising to people.”

On Wednesday, April 4 at 4 p.m. in Lillis 182, Guldberg will present his ongoing research during a lecture titled “The Perils and Promise of Regenerative Medicine.” He will not start working full time at UO until August. He said he hopes this brief visit will help him make connections at the university and throughout the state. While UO currently lacks an engineering program, Guldberg said that discussions about establishing such a program have occured and that he will recruit more bioengineers to campus.

“Part of the reason I was hired was that there is a recognition that the complex problems we work on now require an interdisciplinary approach,” Guldberg said. “And UO has absolutely terrific life sciences and other areas, but they don’t have engineering. To complete that innovation cycle requires an entire team at UO.”

Dr. Guldberg will lecture on the uncertain yet exciting frontier of regenerative medicine. (Courtesy of University of Oregon)

At its core, regenerative medicine — a subset of bioengineering — develops biological solutions instead of using metal, plastic or other non-biological methods to work with serious medical conditions such as an extreme injury or birth defects. Regenerative medicine has great potential, according to Guldberg, who cited 3D printed tissues that have already been used on human patients.

Guldberg said the 3D printing technology has been “actually used to save several babies’ lives.”

If administered correctly, bioengineered tissue can grow and assimilate with a given individual. Non-organic implants lack such capability. Also, non-organic implants pose various risks that bioengineered tissue could theoretically avoid, such as a pacemaker running out of battery. But Guldman said numerous technical, regulatory and ethical challenges remain for regenerative medicine specialists.

“You have some of these stem cell clinics that are just using the marketing of, ‘Hey we’ve got stem cells. We’ll stick them into your spine and you’ll feel better,’” Guldberg said. “They’re not necessarily putting good science behind that. It’s a pretty layered area that is making an impact now but is also something that we have to be careful of and make sure there is good science behind the therapies.”

Commercialization is also a quandary for regenerative medicine researchers like Guldberg.

“The reality is, if you can’t take these new technologies and turn them into a business that makes money,” Guldberg said, “then you can’t get them into patients.”

Given his engineering background, Guldberg said he is particularly concerned with establishing a quality control system for cells used in cell therapy.

“Cell therapies are where the automotive industry was in the early 1900s,” Guldberg said. “We can do it in a sort of one-off way, but it’s very expensive. The quality control is not there. We haven’t even really decided what should we measure to know we’ve got a good quality cell to put into a patient.”

Follow Franklin Lewis on Twitter (@flewis_1)

The post Science Pick of the Week: Future Knight Campus Director Robert Guldberg talks Regenerative Medicine in upcoming lecture appeared first on Emerald Media.

On this episode of the Podcast-to-be-Named, hosts Cal Will and Frankie Lewis break down the biggest off-season news for each team in the AL East, including the Yankees formidable hitting squad and the Red Sox competitive chances. Sports writer Zak Laster joins the show to report recent games and stats for Duck baseball.

This episode was produced by Alec Cowan.

The post Podcast: AL East team previews and Duck baseball putting up plenty of runs appeared first on Emerald Media.