UO E-Clips is a daily report prepared by the Office of Communications (http://comm.uoregon.edu) summarizing current news coverage of the University of Oregon.
Media mentions for August 2
Ousted Badminton Players Lose in Challenge to Olympic Spirit
Bloomberg: Teams from Japan, China, South Korea and Indonesia all tried to avoid winning at the Olympics on July 31. Japan was the only one to get away with it ... The International Olympic Committee, which owns the games, fiercely defends that tradition, which has helped produce a billion-dollar brand, said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon ... he understood the athletes' reasoning in London, much like when a team in the National Football League, the most popular U.S. sport, will bench some of its key players after it has clinched a playoff spot. "And yet there is something about the Olympics and that expectation of always giving your best that amplifies the angst in this case," he said.
Workers start cutting up dock that washed ashore: Last year's tsunami tore the concrete structure away from a Japanese port
Associated Press: With a crowd of spectators lounging in lawn chairs and snapping photos, workers on Wednesday started cutting up the boxcar-sized Japanese dock that was torn away from a fishing port by last year's tsunami and washed up on an Oregon beach. The plan is to cut the 165-ton concrete dock into five slices, like a loaf of bread, using a piece of equipment called a wire saw. ... "We really are trying to keep in mind that this came from a massive disaster in Japan and try to treat it with the respect it deserves," Scott Korab, director of business development for Ballard Diving and Salvage of Vancouver, Wash., said over the low rumble of the wire saw and the roar of the wind. ... The Oregon Historical Society has asked for a piece, as has a museum at the University of Oregon, said Parks Department spokesman Chris Havel.
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Late mentions for August 1
Gottfredson Takes Helm At U Of O
OPB: The University of Oregon has a new president. Wednesday, Michael Gottfredson began his tenure leading the University. He is taking over for Robert Berdahl, who has been serving as interim president since June. Julie Brown is a spokeswoman for the U of O. She says that Gottfredson will be well prepared for the start of the school year.
Bernanke, the Reluctant Revolutionary
Bloomberg Businessweek: Inside Ben Bernanke are two birds. The hawk hates inflation. The dove hates unemployment. On Aug. 1 the chairman of the Federal Reserve expressed his inner hawk. Despite the longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression and inflation that's actually below the Fed's target, the rate-setting committee that he runs stood pat. At the end of a two-day meeting in Washington, the Federal Open Market Committee issued a statement acknowledging that the U.S. economy has "decelerated somewhat" but did not announce any fresh measures to stimulate growth. Doves were dismayed, if not surprised: "They really took a pass," says University of Oregon economist Tim Duy, who runs the Fed Watch blog.
The Huffington Post: The most compelling personal memoirs -- Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, and others -- are not happy stories. They are recollections of childhood adversity, and rarely are they triumphant survivors' tales ... University of Oregon psychological scientist Alice Graham and her colleagues decided to look inside the sleeping brains of 6- to 12-month-old children, to see how they process angry arguments in the home.
Is Your Office Building Trying to Kill You?
Wired: Given the fact that the majority of our existence is spent in the artificial and highly engineered interior environment, we know very little about our microbial co-inhabitants, the microscopic creatures that coat the surfaces and float in the air of the rooms we live in ... A recent study from Steven Kembel and his colleagues at the University of Oregon seeks to change that. By comparing the microbial communities from rooms with different air ventilation systems – and thus different temperature, humidity, and light regimes – the scientists make the case that architecture determines microbial community, to potentially dangerous effect.