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 April 10
ASUO Elections Board decides to remove Katie and Alex from ballot
Daily Emerald: The ASUO Elections Board decided to remove Katie Taylor and Alex Sylvester from the ballot and add Ben Bowman and Lamar Wise late Monday night. The official document states it made its decision due to the grievance filed by the Ben and Lamar campaign regarding the alleged phishing website made by members of the Katie and Alex campaign.
Union growth up in Oregon
Register-Guard from Associated Press: Efforts to organize nurses and home health care workers kept the percentage of Oregon’s work force represented by unions at one of the highest levels in the United States. Union members make up 17 percent of all workers in Oregon, seventh-highest in the nation, according to figures recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The national average is about 12 percent. The total number of union workers in Oregon increased last year to 270,000, up from 211,000 in 2006. The swell is thanks in large part to efforts by the Service Employees International Union to organize health workers, said Bob Bussel, an associate professor and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon.
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Media mentions for April 9
UO's Sustainable City program grows up, draws emulators
Sustainable Business Oregon: Students in the Sustainable City Year Program presenting their findings to the Salem City Council. The University of Oregon this month will host representatives from 20 institutions across the country and in Canada to learn about how they can replicate the school's Sustainable Cities Initiative at their own universities. From April 18 through the 20th, some 40 delegates will attend workshops in Portland, Salem and Eugene to gather information about the Sustainable City Year Program, which UO launched in 2009. The program, which pairs a city in Oregon with a cross-discipline team of students tasked with tackling sustainability-related issues that the city is looking for help on, has so far dedicated more than 200,000 of student hours to projects in three cities: Gresham, Salem and Springfield.
University of Oregon data center to give researchers room to think
Daily Journal of Commerce Oregon: At a certain point, human genome mapping is more of a math problem than a scientific challenge. “With the advent of very affordable, incredibly high-speed computers with huge, huge, huge, previously unimaginable amounts of memory, whole new avenues of research have become available to people if they’ve got suitable equipment and technical support to pursue it,” said Dana Johnston, associate dean of natural sciences for the University of Oregon. Genomics is one of many research fields at UO that could benefit from a new data center the university is developing. The 3,800-square-foot facility will be in the basement of Allen Hall, which is undergoing a $15 million renovation and expansion.
UO Custodian Arrested for Campus Theft Allegations
KEZI: A University of Oregon custodian is accused of stealing gaming systems, iPads, video cameras and much more, out of the classrooms he was supposed to be cleaning. Eugene police officers and the UO Department of Public Safety investigated Thomas Morgan, Jr. for more than three years. They say they searched his home Monday and found about $10,000 worth of stolen property. Investigators say Morgan stole most of it from the science buildings and the Ford Alumni Center.
UO Student Campaigners Accused of Hacking
KEZI: A run for student body president at the University of Oregon led to accusations of computer hacking between campaigns this week. University leaders say they've never seen allegations on this level during election season. Some campaigners are speaking out saying what's on the ballot could have been skewed by computer hackers.
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Media mentions for April 8
Bias suit against UO revived
Register-Guard: A former University of Oregon doctoral student has won the right to have a jury hear her claim that a UO professor retaliated against her after she complained of gender bias. A three-judge panel of the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a June 2010 ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene, who had said there wasn’t enough uncertainty about the evidence to take the case to trial.
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Media mentions for April 7
Community plants trees for Oregon Arbor Week
KVAL: Around this time each spring, Connie Berglund of Eugene is always raking up mulch and planting trees in a Eugene neighborhood. "I just grew up loving trees," Berglund said. "We started planting trees in various actions in the 1980s." Two decades later, the annual Arbor Day tree planting event is still going strong with more than 100 volunteers planting dozens of trees throughout Eugene ... A group of sorority sisters with Kappa Alpha Theta at the University of Oregon found the task a little more difficult than they expected. "I don't usually dig holes," said Schere Caufield, a volunteer at the tree planting. "The trees are pretty heavy and we're all pretty tiny girls." But with a little teamwork, the sorority sisters said they are determined to make a difference. "It just makes the community so much prettier," Caufield said. "I mean trees just make it a place you want to be. If a bunch of sorority girls can come out here and plant trees I think anyone could come out here and plant trees."
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Late mentions for April 6
Green Lab Pinnacle: LEED Platinum In Oregon
Earth Techling: As the Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce notes, science facilities present a number of green building challenges that are usually considered hard to overcome. There are the energy demands of high tech equipment for one, along with the needs for specialized ventilation systems in lab areas (which also have different climate control requirements than other areas of the building)—but we’ve covered a number of green labs that have cropped up over the last year or so, and now, the University of Oregon’s Lewis Integrative Science Building is poised to move to the head of the class with a LEED Platinum certification.
Renewable energy output must more than quadruple to replace fossil
Altenergymag: A study from the University of Oregon and published in the journal "Nature Climate Change" is challenging conventional thinking that renewable energy sources may one day replace fossil fuels. Sociologist Richard York studied the use of electricity from fossil fuels and alternative sources in 130 countries during the past half century. He discovered that rather than replacing fossil fuels, the alternative energy sources barely outpaced rising demand in the past 50 years.