Photo by George Poinar

A single, incredibly well-preserved specimen of the tiny but scary-looking fly was preserved for eternity in Burmese amber, and it had a small horn emerging from the top of its head, topped by three eyes that would have given it the ability to see predators coming. But despite that clever defense mechanism, it was apparently an evolutionary dead end that later disappeared.

OSU News Release: Ancient “monster” insect offers Halloween inspirations

Science Daily: Ancient ‘Monster’ Insect: ‘Unicorn’ Fly Never Before Observed

Check out this page on the OSU Foundation’s website containing news about the launch of the Linus Pauling Science Center. There’s a live webcam there, so you can watch construction as it happens! (Scroll to the bottom of the page to view the webcam.)

OSU’s Dawn Wright, Professor of Geography and Oceanography, talks about the science behind the power of tsunamis. (If you are unable to view the video below, click here to see it at the CBS website.)

Follow Dawn on Twitter: @deepseadawn

The committee for the Oregon Partnership for Alzheimer’s Research announces the recipients of the 2009 – 2010 OPAR grants.

Congratulations OPAR Grant Recipients!

The Oregon Partnership for Alzheimer’s Research Committee is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2009- 2010 OPAR grants. These grants are made possible through the Oregon Tax Checkoff program.  You can support this program when you file your state income tax.  Support researchers who are entering the field of Alzheimer’s disease research or who are pursuing new directions in Alzheimer’s research.

Jadwiga M. Giebultowicz, Ph.D. – “The Role of the Circadian Clock in Alzheimer’s Disease”
Humans and other animals have an internal clock system that regulates sleep-wake patterns.  This internal system is called a circadian clock.  Circadian clocks synchronize biological processes within an organism and coordinate them with the solar day/night cycle. Deregulation of circadian synchronization leads to sleep disturbances and age-related diseases. Recent data suggest that disruption of the circadian system and age-related pathologies are not understood. We recently showed that disruption of the circadian clock leads to increased levels of oxidative damage in the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster. Since impaired circadian rhythms and oxidative stress are linked to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we initiated a novel study aimed to decipher how the circadian clock protects against age-related oxidative damage.

http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/research/centers-institutes/neurology/alzheimers/news-events/news-story.cfm

“We found that it took triple the dose of one pesticide to have the same lethal effect on fruit flies at the time of day their defenses were strongest, compared to when they were weakest,” said Louisa Hooven, a postdoctoral fellow in the OSU Department of Zoology and lead author on the study. “A different pesticide took twice the dose. This makes it pretty clear that the time of day of an exposure to a pesticide can make a huge difference in its effectiveness.”

The new findings, the OSU researchers said, are also another example of how circadian rhythms are important in other detoxification systems in biology.

From the Eugene Register Guard:

Researchers led by a professor at Oregon State University said they finally have confirmed what some scientists have believed for some time: that the last ice age ended because of a slight shift in the Earth’s orbit. The findings could help scientists predict how the planet’s remaining ice will be affected by global warming as well as when the planet will again be topped by miles-thick ice.

OSU geosciences professor Peter Clark is the lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Science. A joint project undertaken by several universities and government agencies, the study pinpointed the timing of the last ice age in an effort to determine which of several planet­wide changes brought the Earth out of the freezer.

The oceans are still largely out of sight and out of mind for most of us, says Jane Lubchenco. The Oregon State University professor and head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was interviewed this month by The New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert for YaleEnvironment360. See http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2169

Earlier this year, Ph.D. student Logan Mitchell spent two months working at the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide research station in Antarctica. Now, Ph.D. student Julia Rosen will spend three weeks this summer at the North Greenland Eemian Ice Core Drilling Project (NEEM), and she will continue the blog.

Julia took some photos from the aircraft (an LC-130, which can land on ice). Here’s a glimpse of two outlet glaciers.

We’ve added a page on Facebook for our friends who would like to connect with us there. Links on the Facebook page will lead back to the Breakthroughs blog, to other stories and videos on the web, or to pages on the OSU website.

Hope to see you there!

Breakthroughs in Science at Oregon State University on Facebook

For teachers planning to focus on volcanoes this year, see this Web site maintained by Dr. Shan de Silva, professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. The site includes curricula, a kids page, a blog about ongoing volcanic activity and a world map showing volcano locations.

Mount St. Helens (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey)