UO E-clips, Aug. 2-4

Oregon athletes, products on display in Beijing (KTVZ.com, article in its entirety): When the Olympic games open Friday in Beijing, the Oregon connection will be hard to miss. There will be 27 athletes with Oregon ties competing in 11 different sports. And, of course, the Nike swoosh will be plastered nearly everywhere. The Beaverton-based company is outfitting athletes from 38 counties. There will also be smaller reminders of the Beaver state. For example, heat-resistant paint made in Eugene will protect the Olympic torch cauldron that guards the sailing venue. And sports marketing experts from the University of Oregon have been advising Chinese officials. Oregon-grown clover is being used to control dust in Chinese cities. And Oregon nursery stock, including shade trees, has been planted to beautify Beijing.

Oregon presence will mark games (Register-Guard): When the Beijing Olympic Games open this Friday, Oregon’s presence will be all over the place, in the form of those distinctive swooshes bedecking athletes’ shoes and uniforms, as well as through the efforts of the 27 athletes with Oregon ties competing in 11 sports. … Athletes competing at Beijing’s iconic “Bird’s Nest” Olympic Stadium and other venues will be trodding on turf grown from Oregon grass seed. China’s fledgling efforts to link sports and commerce relied on the sports marketing experts at the University of Oregon. And heat-resistant paint protecting the Olympic torch cauldron outside the sailing venue was made right here in Eugene.

Olympic runners face heat, pollution (Detroit News): Everyone else was dressed appropriately for the weather: T-shirts, tank tops, a few men even went shirtless. But as a crowd of two dozen or so gathered for a Thursday night workout at the Hanson's Running Shop in Royal Oak, one runner stood out: Brian Sell, the Olympic marathoner, was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. And he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt layered on top of that, despite early-evening temperatures still hovering in the upper-70s. … Attempting to simulate the heat and humidity that awaits in Beijing, Ritzenhein utilized a "climate room" at the University of Oregon. The high-tech environmental lab run by the school's human physiology department is affectionately dubbed the "torture chamber."

Good to the bone crime fiction from Pacific Northwest writers (Seattle Times): Summer has brought, among other good things, a bumper crop of mysteries from Pacific Northwest crime writers. Settle by the pond, pool, lake or ocean with a tall cool glass of whatever and one of these diverting tales -- you won't need to come up for air until September. The intriguing, richly drawn historical mystery "Cézanne's Quarry" (Pegasus, 368 pp., $25) is the fiction debut of Barbara Corrado Pope. By day a historian and director of Women's Studies at the University of Oregon, Pope handily blends genuine figures and events into her fictional bouillabaisse of art, science and mystery.

Controversy vs. competition (The Oregonian): The official slogan is "One World One Dream," which at the moment sounds like wishful thinking. The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing are shaping up as the most controversial since the end of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union traded boycotts in 1980 and 1984. …"I think the Chinese were hoping for a kind of coming-out party, for the world to recognize how prosperous they had become, how far advanced they are," said University of Oregon political science professor Richard Kraus, who has written extensively on Chinese politics and culture.

These athletes are worth rooting for (Chicago Tribune): Sello Maduma comes from one of the black townships of Pretoria, South Africa, a place called Mamelodi where most children live in a world circumscribed by decades of racial segregation and poverty. "Not many people expect someone from the townships to be on the Olympic team," Maduma said.…"The Olympics tend to mint a different hero in the one you least expect," said Paul Swangard, director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon business school. "The magic of the Games is that there is a Rulon Gardner, a Mary Lou Retton or a Billy Mills waiting in the wings."

Malls join with emerging companies to find best fit (Register-Guard): Newlyweds Colin and Ying Rodman had both an opportunity and a dilemma. Ying Rodman -- originally from the city of Tianjin, in mainland China -- had family connections to an exclusive line of handbags manufactured in China, as well as other goods ranging from silver jewelry to silk pillow covers. … As it turns out, a growing segment of the lease market at shopping centers nationwide is designed to accommodate would-be retailers such as the Rodmans. So-called “specialty leasing” programs offer short-term, discounted leases on storefronts that otherwise would stand vacant. … Rhonda Stoltz, chief financial officer of the University of Oregon Bookstore, says the Duck Store began in the early 2000s as a kiosk concept. Its leases for the first couple of years ran only through the football and Christmas seasons -- with the provision to stay on through January if the UO football team went to a bowl game.

Patients turn to advocates for help navigating the medical system (Associated Press, appearing in Chicago's Daily Herald): After three surgeries, Judy Sherer still had chronic pain in her left shoulder. She'd lost faith in her doctors, and in despair tried a new health benefit offered by her employer. The service, Health Advocate, is a call-in center that helps customers find the right doctor, haggle over insurance coverage and manage other medical system headaches. … More than ever, people need help negotiating the medical system, said Jessica Greene, a University of Oregon health policy analyst.