UO E-clips, Oct. 25-27

Public buildings could use wood heat (Register-Guard): Millions of tons of waste wood from logging and forest fuel reduction are burned in piles in Oregon each year, and a better use for at least some of that would be heating public buildings, according to a new energy guide from the University of Oregon. The idea of burning wood for energy isn't as cutting-edge as using solar panels, windmills or hybrid engines. "When you talk about burning, red flags go up," said Marcus Kauffman, a program manager at Resource Innovations, a program in the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the UO.

For some businesses, hard times are boom times (Bend Bulletin): Times are tough for many Central Oregon businesses, but not as much for some. "We are slammed," David Hyder, a sales clerk at Bend Pawn & Trading Company Inc., said Friday. "This (last) week has been a crazy week. People are getting their paychecks." With their paychecks, customers can pay back the loans they received for goods used as collateral at the pawnshop -- at a profit for the business. ... Businesses that are doing well during hard times are classified not as recession-proof, but as countercyclical, which means that during high-growth periods they might not do as well, said Timothy Duy, adjunct assistant professor in the Economics Department at the University of Oregon.

Western states will discuss cutting greenhouse gases (Register-Guard): A region wide effort by Western governors to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases spewing into the atmosphere will get a hearing at a public meeting in Eugene on Tuesday. Climate change and energy experts will be on hand to explain the Western Climate Initiative, a proposal that emerged from conversations among Gov. Ted Kulongoski and his counterparts in Washington and California back in 2003. In recent years four other states and four Canadian provinces have signed on to the notion that collective effort may be the best way to avert climate change. ... Bob Doppelt, director of the University of Oregon's Climate Leadership Initiative, also will be on hand to describe other measures that could be undertaken.

Eugene online testing company spans the globe (Associated Press, appearing on KGW.com): Last academic year, 50,000 students in middle schools, high schools and colleges nationwide sat down at their computers and took a Web-based test to determine their proficiency in Spanish, Japanese, or one of five other foreign languages. Those tests, and the technology enabling them to be delivered over the Internet, were developed in Eugene by a company called Avant Assessment. ... "What 9/11 did to wake us up to the need for foreign language speakers for national security, the (recent) financial crisis is waking us up to the need for language and cultural education for economic security and competitiveness," said Carl Falsgraf, director of the Center for Applied Second Language Studies, at the University of Oregon.

Big dollars flow from local donors (Register-Guard): Most Lane County residents don't know Lee Babb and Carlos Barrera, but the two Eugene men play a key role in this year's election. Babb and Barrera are among the county's top campaign contributors. From the spring primary contest to this fall's general election, they have written big checks to their favorite candidates. In Lane County, Babb and Barrera are among the 15 donors and their Eugene-Springfield area businesses that collectively have given nearly $500,000 to local and state candidates and causes this year, with more disclosure reports to be filed with the state before the Nov. 4 election. ... That makes fundraising more important to people seeking public office, said Ed Weeks, a University of Oregon associate professor of planning, public policy and management.

UO getting $3.2 million in climate change grants (Associated Press): A pair of federal grants totaling $3.2 million will help University of Oregon researchers study ways to protect the Northwest from the effects of global climate change. Ecologist Scott Bridgham will lead a study on the potential threats to prairie ecosystems in Oregon and Washington state. Landscape architecture professor Bart Johnson will study urban growth in the heavily populated Willamette Valley and its effect on ecosystems, wildfires, land use and land management. The pair will work together to find ways to improve biodiversity while protecting people and property from wildfires in the face of a changing climate. The four-year studies are being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

OSU, UO get grant for green chemistry center (Associated Press): Oregon State University and the University of Oregon have received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create a new Center for Green Materials Chemistry. The schools say research at the new center should lead to advanced electronics with a reduced environmental footprint, higher performance and lower cost. Researchers say that many manufacturing processes for electronic devices are wasteful, sometimes require toxic or carcinogenic materials, and result in high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. If the joint research program at Oregon and Oregon State is successful, the new center could be eligible for another $25 million in federal funding.

Slimy pickings (Register-Guard): Matthew Bigongiari's fifth-grade class at The Village School is interested in cutting down on the waste they generate, as witnessed by the aluminum water bottles perched on some desk tops. But when it came to digging through garbage, for some that was pushing it too far. The green audit brought the fifth-graders outside on a sunny Friday afternoon to sift through the garbage from the school's cafeteria to find out what could have been recycled or composted rather than thrown away. The audit was part of the University of Oregon's Environmental Leadership Program Sustainable Education Partnership project. A team of UO students is working with the Institute for Sustainability Education and Ecology and the Oregon Green Schools Program to assist eight local schools to become certified Oregon Green Schools.