By Caley Henderson The Smiling Crabber   When I went out crabbing for the first time, I got seasick. The sun broke through the clouds just as my colleague and I arrived at the Newport, OR dock. Charter captain Greg Niles came over to shake our hands wearing a smile and a sweatshirt with a fish on it. Later, he took off the sweatshirt to reveal a fish t-shirt underneath. The smile rarely left his face.    We boarded a small fishing charter boat called the Manu Kai, a name Niles inherited from the previous owner. He said it meant “albatross.” The vessel was just big enou ..read more

By David Baker What do Trinidadian guppies, fruit flies, coho salmon and humans have in common? We all make choices. And one of the most important choices for any species is selecting a mate and passing on genetic material to future generations.   Behavioral ecologist Heather Auld came to the Marine Fisheries Genetics Lab at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon to study the mating choices that salmon make. “It’s an open field, and it did surprise me how much we have to learn, given the importance of salmon to culture and the economy,” says Auld, whos ..read more

Traffic on the road north from the Bangladeshi capitol of Dhaka to the city of Mymensingh is a system of organized chaos. Six lanes of vehicles squeeze onto a two-lane highway. Battered busses swerve around rickshaws and trucks barrel toward parting crowds of pedestrians. It’s a white-knuckled ballet of dodges and near misses mediated by a series of honks and hand gestures, but with the grace and synchronicity of a school of fish. Perhaps that’s why aquaculture researcher Hillary Egna seems pensive and relaxed as she stares out the window of our microbus at the frenzy of traffic in one of the ..read more

By David Baker Traffic on the road north from the Bangladeshi capitol of Dhaka to the city of Mymensingh is a system of organized chaos. Six lanes of vehicles squeeze onto a two-lane highway. Battered busses swerve around rickshaws and trucks barrel toward parting crowds of pedestrians. It’s a white-knuckled ballet of dodges and near misses mediated by a series of honks and hand gestures, but with the grace and synchronicity of a school of fish. Perhaps that’s why aquaculture researcher Hillary Egna seems pensive and relaxed as she stares out the window of our microbus at the frenzy of traffi ..read more

By Irem Y. Tumer, Interim Vice President for Research “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go.” — T.S. Eliot Each day at Oregon State University, researchers take a step into the unknown. As this issue of Terra shows, they delve into realms as vast as a changing planet and as intimate as the human body. They address grand challenges like feeding the world and problems as tiny as the behavior of a fruit fly. They create devices that turn wild ideas into practical realities. And in the end, they work to deliver significant discoveries and innov ..read more

By Nick Houtman Last August, as part of the Oregon State University Marine Studies Initiative, Gil Sylvia called a meeting of OSU faculty and staff with an interest in aquaculture. He was pleasantly surprised when 30 people showed up in Corvallis on a summer day. “They were all positive about advancing aquaculture at OSU and the need for some kind of coordination and collaboration,” says Sylvia, emeritus professor and former director of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station in Newport. “There’s a sense of rediscovery of the field in states like Oregon and that the industry can be manag ..read more

By Anastasia Athon Heck Paving a path for new voices to emerge in the literary arts has been a focus for Oregon State University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program for nearly 20 years. Since 2002, the program has quickly evolved into one of the country’s premier graduate opportunities for aspiring novelists, creative nonfiction writers and poets. Today, OSU’s MFA program is among the university’s crown jewels with more than 350 applicants vying for a highly coveted 12 admission spots in 2018.  “We foster a real close community among the writers,” says Keith Scribner, MFA p ..read more

By Nick Houtman When samples of infant digestive fluids and stool arrive in David Dallas’ Milam Hall lab, they are treated with extra care. The fluids have been carefully collected from the stomachs and small intestines of preterm infants and the stool from their diapers, all according to strict protocols. “They are very precious when we do get them,” says Dallas, an assistant professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University.  The samples from the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland provide vital clues about how these infants digest m ..read more

By Steve Lundeberg Three years ago a British Columbia man named George Gould developed a bacterial infection following colorectal surgery at a Vancouver hospital. Antibiotics failed to knock the infection down. Then failed again. Twenty-two times, Gould was admitted to the hospital for intravenous antibiotics. Following the last hospital trip, the 58-year-old died, a victim of New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, an enzyme behind some so-called “superbugs.” Superbugs are an evolutionary result of decades of largely unfettered antibiotic use on humans and animals, along with environmental contami ..read more

By Gregg Kleiner We live in a modern world that is awash in artificial light from fluorescent tubes, energy-efficient LEDs and computer screens. The light from these relatively new innovations might be taking a toll on our health in ways we are only beginning to understand. Many of us have seen the ghostly, pale bluish glow cast upon a person’s face by a mobile phone or computer on a dark night. But light at the blue end of the color spectrum doesn’t always appear blue; the glow might look like a warm white or other color. And it is emitted from a wide range of sources in addition to our ..read more