News and Events

While people may speculate about the spider population, and have tales of close encounters to prove it, entomologists at Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Agriculture said this is just a normal year and that area arachnophobes need not fear an imminent invasion.

Scientists have found a tiny fly with a three-pronged horn and spiky eyes preserved in a chunk of amber dating to roughly 100 million years ago. The fly has been named Cascoplecia insolitis (Casco meaning old and insolitis for strange, unusual) and is so bizarre that that it has been assigned to a new insect family, reports George Poinar, Jr. of Oregon State University.

A common avian parasite may have brought down one of the world's most famous Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs, a study appearing online September 29 in PLoS ONE suggests. The new study is very interesting because "it supports our view that dinosaurs were infected by many pathogens," says paleobiologist George Poinar of Oregon State University in Corvallis.

OSU's Dawn Wright talks about the science behind the power of tsunamis.

The finding, from a forensic DNA study of meat bought on Japanese markets, suggests that either Japan's scientific whaling programme is taking more animals from this population than previously estimated, or accidental "by-catch" of the whales in fishing nets is larger than officially reported.

Researchers at Oregon State University and other institutions have developed a new "plasmonic nanorod metamaterial" using extraordinarily tiny rods of gold that will have important applications in medical, biological and chemical sensors.

The name of Linus Pauling, the famed scientist and Oregon State University alumnus, will be front and center on the Linus Pauling Science Center when the building is finished in June 2011.

As the researchers report tomorrow in Nature, it was predominantly natural, a combination of vegetation buildup after the ice age and, more prominently, the slow reaction to this change by ocean chemistry. But humans, the team concluded, played a small part. "It's a much better picture than we previously had," says geochemist Edward Brook of Oregon State University, Corvallis.

OSU Professor Aaron Wolf discusses why water conflict has an impact on world peace. He has been facilitating solutions to water conflicts for years and sees many lessons in peacemaking emerging from the experience.

Oregon State University recognized the achievements of more than two dozen leading faculty and staff members in 21 award categories with some of its most prestigious annual awards this week as part of University Day, the annual kick-off of the new school year.