UO E-clips, April 10

U. of Oregon awards honorary degrees to Japanese Americans who were expelled in 1942 (Chronicle of Higher Education): When Midori Funatake came here to the University of Oregon in 1940, she never suspected that she would not get her degree until Sunday, April 6, 2008. She had set out from home, on the outskirts of Portland, 100 miles to the north, with a student's traditional motivation: "It was far enough away from home that I could feel independent," recalls Mrs. Midori Komoto, as she later became. (Read the full story)

Botnet economy runs wild (NetworkWorld.com): Cybercriminals have created a global business with a supply chain every bit as organized and sophisticated as that of any legitimate business. The difference is that cybercrime takes advantage of unsuspecting consumers and insecure businesses to steal untold amounts of money. According to security experts and spam fighters speaking at a panel discussion on Wednesday at the RSA Conference, the modern, online criminal ecosystem starts with botnets, which are consumer or college PCs that have been taken over by hackers. A cybercriminal can easily go online and buy a bot-herd. In fact, Joe St. Sauver, manager of security programs at the Internet2 networking consortium and the University of Oregon, said there are 5 million to 5.5 million botnets in active rotation at any time.

Green talk and the bottom line (Register-Guard): University of Oregon law students see green business as the next big business trend, and they want to be ready for jobs in the emerging renewables sector in the state and national economies, said Rob Illig, assistant professor in business law. “The venture capital industry is rushing headlong into investments into green technologies,” Illig said. “The thought is that -- just like Google didn’t exist a few years ago as an important business -- there’s probably some hybrid technology that we don’t know about that someone is developing right now. People are rushing to find it and finance it and build it.”

Some U of O faculty get awarded (KOIN-TV Channel 6, Portland): Newscast follows in its entirety … NEWSCASTER: Today University of Oregon faculty members are getting big honors. NEWSCASTER 2: Anthropologist and folklorist Philip Scher and neuroscientist Shawn Lockrey, here's Shawn pictured here. They've been selected as 2008 Guggenheim Fellows. To date, 54 U of O faculty members have been awarded 58 Guggenheim fellows. (EDITOR'S NOTE: After a review of the records, the UO news release on the Web was updated to show that 58 UO faculty have received 62 fellowships)