UO E-clips, Jan. 11

University of Oregon opens doors to achievement with PathwayOregon (Bend Weekly): University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer announced last week details of a promise to cover tuition and fees for lower-income Oregonians entering the university as freshmen next fall. The promise, called PathwayOregon, guarantees that qualified Oregonians from lower income families can attend the UO tuition free by covering any remaining tuition costs not picked up by federal and state financial aid. It also provides students with comprehensive academic support and in some cases room and board. PathwayOregon is the first pledge of its kind at a public university in Oregon.

Diversifying through football (Inside Higher Ed): You’d be hard pressed to find a college or university now that has not made the ethnic and socioeconomic diversification of its student body a high priority. Institutions have stepped up their recruitment efforts, reaching out more aggressively to students from underrepresented racial and other groups, expanding their financial aid offerings to low-income students, and bolstering as well their strategies for retaining academically underprepared students. Gone, presumably, are the days when the primary way an African American male could catch the eye of a college was with a sweet jump shot or throwing a football 60 yards. … The University of Oregon faces a similar situation. The state’s African American population hovers in the 2 percent range, as does the black proportion of the undergraduate student body at the university. Of the 137 black undergrads on the campus in 2005-6, 48 (or 35 percent) were scholarship athletes and 38 played football on Oregon’s team, which this year ranked among the nation’s best. “From the data, it seems obvious that lots of African-American male students see athletics as a major pathway to college,” says Charles Martinez, vice provost for institutional equity and diversity at Oregon. The challenge, he says, “is not to have a reliance on a single pathway” for first generation, low-income, or minority students. “Higher education is just coming around to the realization that for effective outreach [to underrepresented students], we can’t start in high school. That’s something that athletics [departments] figured out a long time ago.”

A gene that makes sex deadly (Nature.com): Ever felt unlucky in love? You’re surely better off than the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. When the Hawaiian and Bristol strains of this worm breed with one another, their grandchildren pay the price: a genetic incompatibility kills a quarter of the embryos. Yet the genes responsible for this brutal outcome seem to be conserved by natural selection. … The authors suggest that some unknown benefit to the genes involved may counteract the reproductive costs involved in carrying the gene. What that is, though, remains unknown. "It would have to be a big advantage because of the lethality,” says Patrick Phillips, of the University of Oregon in Eugene, who also studies C. elegans evolution.

Big fish on campus (Daily Emerald): About a hundred trillion bacteria are living in the pit of a human's stomach. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. With the help of some fish, University researchers found that the body tolerates the bacteria, and they found the bacteria help digest food in the gut. The research marks another study using zebrafish at the University, which is recognized as the center for zebrafish research in the science community. Scientists say zebrafish could help find treatments for inherited diseases because the fish make for ideal experiment specimens. University researcher Karen Guillemin found that a common enzyme, called intestinal alkaline phosphatase, in the intestines of all fish and humans plays a role in detoxifying a component of the cell wall of many bacteria that reside in the intestine as symbionts.

UO index sees mixed signals (Register-Guard): Oregon is closer to slipping into recession than it has been in more than five years, but job growth is the wild card that could prevent the fall, said Tim Duy, economist and author of the University of Oregon’s Index of Economic Indicators. The index bounced back slightly in November after dropping in October. Both the local and national economies, however, are “throwing out a lot of mixed signals that would be consistent with a significant flattening of growth rates toward the end of last year,” Duy said. The index, which tracks eight measures of economic health -- five statewide and three national -- rose 0.2 percent to 102.3 in November. The index had a base rate of 100 in 1997.

Oregon economy shows slight upturn (Oregonian): A University of Oregon monthly economic index ticked up in November, a professor reported Thursday, pulling out of a decline that had prompted a recession warning last month. The UO Index of Economic Indicators rose 0.2 percent, said Timothy Duy, Oregon Economic Forum director. But trends during the past four months continue to suggest relatively weak economic conditions over the next three to six months, said Duy, an adjunct assistant professor of economics. "The drag from the declining housing sector and tighter credit markets are likely to result in near recessionary economic conditions in the early part of 2008," Duy wrote in the monthly report released Thursday. Three of the index's eight indicators improved during November: Oregon residential building permits, help-wanted advertising and nonfarm payrolls -- all seasonally adjusted. The other indicators posted unfavorable results, including a continued increase in seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims.