UO E-clips, Dec. 20-22

Stock Investors Lose Faith, Pull Out Record Amounts (Wall Street Journal): One of the hallmarks of the long market downturns in the 1930s and the 1970s has returned: Rank-and-file investors are losing faith in stocks. In the grinding bear markets of the past, huge stock losses left individual investors feeling burned. Failures of once-trusted firms and institutions further sapped their confidence. Many disenchanted investors stayed away from the stock market, holding back gains for a decade or more. ... In 2001, people's hopes for stocks were extremely high. Only 5% of those surveyed expected average annual stock returns in the coming decade to be 5% or less, according to University of Oregon Prof. Paul Slovic, whose company, Decision Research, conducts the surveys. Today, nearly one-third of those surveyed expect such stock weakness, reflecting the decline in investor optimism.

And Now for Something Slightly Different (Medgadget.com): Bill Harbaugh, an economics professor at the University of Oregon who focuses on neuroeconomics, or using neuroscience techniques like fMRI to examine people's economic decisions, has curated a small art exhibit he calls "Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art".

Might Pac-10's dean find a mountaintop, reflect and leave a good-looking program? (Register-Guard): Let's start by shooting down a persistent rumor. Mike Bellotti will not step down -- or actually, up -- after the Holiday Bowl. At least, not right after the game ends. "If you're talking about that timeframe, no," Bellotti says. But Bellotti admits this could be his last game as Oregon's head coach. Sometime after national signing day he will get away from it all, "go sit on the mountaintop." He'll reflect, assess his options, reach a decision. He'll probably be back next season. Or else he won't be.

AP IMPACT: Schools invest in athletes' degrees (Associated Press): From the moment he stepped on campus, 320-pound tackle Michael Oher seemed destined to be a star on Mississippi's football team and a failure in its classrooms. ... Like a lot of other athletes at Ole Miss and elsewhere, Oher got not only tutoring help but a full range of academic support services throughout his career. ... A big question is oversight: Whom do the academic advisers work for? The players? Coaches? The university? "It's a straightforward potential conflict of interest," said Nathan Tublitz, a University of Oregon neuroscientist who works with the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an alliance of Division I faculty senates dedicated to academic reform.

Four UO spinoff ventures to receive $50,000 grants (Register-Guard): Four start-up companies that grew from research at the University of Oregon, including three in Eugene, will receive grants that will help them quickly bring to market new ways to fight infectious diseases and to meet growing demand for food, fuel and raw materials, the UO said Friday. The companies each will receive a $50,000 venture launch grant from the University Venture Development Fund, a tax-incentive program approved in 2007 by the Oregon Legislature.

Land-use board denies appeal on UO arena land (The Oregonian): The Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals on Friday affirmed the Eugene City Council's decision to vacate and sell two street parcels to the University of Oregon in an area slated for the UO's $250 million basketball arena project. LUBA's ruling denied appeals filed by UO student Jonathan Bowers and local activist Deborah Frisch. Bowers had argued that vacating the parcels for the planned Matthew Knight Arena wasn't in the city's best interest, the criterion for decision-making in the applicable portion of Eugene city code. Bowers said UO's current basketball arena, 82-year-old McArthur Court, should be preserved because it is one of the oldest college arenas in use.

New Duck Arena Clears What Could Be Final Legal Hurdle (Oregon Public Broadcasting): The most expensive on-campus college basketball arena ever planned – is on track to be built. The University of Oregon's 12,000-seat Matthew Knight Arena cleared what could be its final legal hurdle Friday. Ethan Lindsey reports. The state Land Use Board of Appeals rejected the last remaining challenge to the arena's construction. Two local residents had appealed the city's decision to eliminate two side streets in order to build the arena. In his complaint, Jonathan Bowers, a university student, claimed the construction of a new arena wasn't in the "public interest".

"Cuba Avant-Garde" at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (The Oregonian): Is this finally Cuba's hour? Almost a half-century after the revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro, the old American nemesis, has stepped aside. An incoming U.S. administration, facing far more pressing challenges, seems uninterested in continuing half-forgotten Cold War enmities. For the well over half of today's Americans who hadn't been born yet when the Bay of Pigs fiasco threatened to blow up in everyone's faces, Che and Fidel and Batista are the stuff of history books. A thaw is in the air. Still, it's not thawed yet. And anything that helps lift the veil -- especially in anticipation of normalized relations between the two countries -- is of interest. In Oregon right now, that swings the spotlight to "Cuba Avant-Garde," a traveling art exhibition at the University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.