Tag: Oregon

science and technology

How Oregon State Uses Tech and Ingenuity to Engage Physics Students Remotely — Campus Technology

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Campus Technology Insider

Podcast: How Oregon State Uses Tech and Ingenuity to Engage Physics Students Remotely

Campus Technology Insider Podcast

The Campus Technology Insider podcast explores current trends and issues impacting technology leaders in higher education. Listen in as Executive Editor Rhea Kelly chats with ed tech experts and practitioners about their work, ideas and experiences.

How Oregon State Uses Tech and Ingenuity to Engage Physics Students Remotely

KC Walsh

KC Walsh

Last fall, Oregon State University launched an Ecampus online program for its introductory physics courses, with an emphasis on collaborative, hands-on learning. Their innovative course design has paid off: At a time when many colleges and universities are struggling to rethink the sciences — and particularly science labs — for remote learning, OSU is engaging its online physics students with technology, open educational resources, take-home lab kits and more.

David Craig

David Craig

For this episode of the podcast, I talked with OSU

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science

Fifty years ago, Oregon exploded a whale with a half-ton of dynamite

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The spectacular failure, and the remarkable local newscast that captured the event, have since become enshrined in Oregon history, so beloved that Florence residents voted to name a park earlier this year after the detonated sea mammal. To celebrate the event’s 50th anniversary on Thursday, the Oregon Historical Society released a remastered video of the original broadcast and the TV station interviewed the former employees who recorded it.

“I was asked about it, virtually every day of my life, or commented on it, by everybody, strangers alike,” Paul Linnman, the on-camera reporter, told KATU.

When the whale washed ashore on Nov. 9, 1970, as Linnman reported at the time, it had been so long since the community had encountered a beached cetacean that no one knew how to dispose of the animal.

As officials pondered the problem, the body began to decay, festering until the surrounding beach smelled of rot.

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science in the news

Decriminalizing drugs in Oregon a ‘victory for common sense and for science’

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Oregon became the first U.S. state to decriminalize all drugs, with voters overwhelmingly supporting a ballot measure on Tuesday intended to reduce arrests and improve access to addiction treatments.



diagram: An election worker sorts mail-in ballots at the Multnomah County Duniway-Lovejoy Elections Building, Nov. 2, 2020, in Portland, Ore.

© Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
An election worker sorts mail-in ballots at the Multnomah County Duniway-Lovejoy Elections Building, Nov. 2, 2020, in Portland, Ore.

Passing Measure 110 means Oregon residents no longer can be arrested or imprisoned for possessing small amounts of substances such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine or LSD. That doesn’t mean the drugs are legal. Instead, the measure reduces the offense to a noncriminal offense and a maximum fine of $100 and mandates establishing an addiction treatment program funded in part by taxes from marijuana sales.

“I think it’s a wonderful victory for common sense and for science,” Kate Chatfield, senior adviser for legislation and policy at The Justice Collaborative, a criminal justice research and advocacy organization, told ABC

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science in the news

‘We believe in science.’ Washington, Oregon and Nevada join California’s vaccine-review plan.

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A week after Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced that a panel of experts from his state would independently review any federally approved coronavirus vaccines before they were administered to residents, the governors of Washington, Oregon and Nevada announced they’d join California’s effort.

The move comes as leaders across the country face a vaccine-development process that many have said they fear is becoming overly politicized.

“We believe in science, public health and safety,” Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington said in a statement. “That is why I am pleased that Washington is joining California and other western states in this effort.”

In September, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced that his state would independently review any vaccines, saying President Trump had politicized the approval process.

“Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion,” Mr. Cuomo said at the time.

But in a news briefing on Tuesday, Mr. Newsom

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science daily

New evidence for geologically recent earthquakes near Portland, Oregon metro area — ScienceDaily

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A paleoseismic trench dug across the Gales Creek fault, located about 35 kilometers (roughly 22 miles) west of Portland, Oregon, documents evidence for three surface-rupturing earthquakes that took place about 8,800, 4,200 and 1,000 years ago.

The findings, published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, suggest that earthquakes occur about every 4,000 years on the fault. If the full 73-kilometer (45 miles) fault were to rupture, the result could be a magnitude 7.1 to 7.4 earthquake that would pose significant seismic hazard to the Portland metro area, according to Alison Horst and her colleagues.

By comparison, the 1993 Scotts Mills earthquake about 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Portland was a magnitude 5.7 earthquake, and caused damages totaling about $30 million, the researchers noted.

The region is part of the seismically active Cascadia subduction zone, where the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate bends beneath the North

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