Topic: science
Video: Students share summer vacation with spiders
20 August 2008
- Advancing Knowledge
(Portland, Ore.)—Spending 40 hours a week with venomous spiders might not be an ideal summer vacation for most people, but for sophomore Tessa Marzulla and junior Micah Depper it’s been an incredible experience. The biology majors have spent their summer analyzing the evolution of the Loxosceles reclusa, or brown recluse spider as part of the [...]
Bentley receives NSF grant for nanoparticle work
15 July 2008
- Advancing Knowledge
(Portland, Ore.)—Anne Bentley, assistant professor of chemistry, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Development Award in Chemistry worth $100,000 to support her work with nanoparticles. Throughout the next year, Bentley will use the grant to integrate research, teaching, and service components of her work with microscopic fluorescent particles, which are similar to materials used [...]
Ratte winner contributes to sciences and student life
30 May 2008
- Advancing Knowledge
- Living Portland
(Portland, Ore.)—Frances Delaney B.A. ’08 believes there is an advantage to studying science at a small college. By the time she won Lewis & Clark’s highest academic honor this month, she had devoted countless hours to the study of chemistry and spent more than a year and a half in laboratories, engaging in research. “I think [...]
Autumn’s gecko research circles the globe
18 April 2008
- Advancing Knowledge
- Engaging our World
(Portland, Ore.)—The future of engineering, National Geographic’s April 2008 issue argues, lies in biology, where researchers like Kellar Autumn are discovering the incredible potential of biomimicry. Autumn—an associate professor of biology and world’s foremost authority on gecko adhesion—studies the mysteries of what he calls “evolutionary nanotechnology.” Spurred on by the potential of far-reaching, real-world biomimetic applications, [...]
Lewis & Clark scientist’s gecko discoveries lead to medical innovation
21 February 2008
- Advancing Knowledge
(Portland, Ore.)—What began as a simple question—“What makes geckos stick?”—has led Kellar Autumn, associate professor of biology, on a journey toward scientific discoveries with myriad applications. The result of more than 15 years of independent and collaborative research, Autumn’s discoveries about adhesion are inspiring innovative ideas and emerging technologies for products as diverse as rock [...]
First-of-its-kind partnership to reduce college’s carbon footprint
15 February 2008
- Living Portland
(Portland, Ore.)—In an effort to expand its use of alternative energies, Lewis & Clark is partnering with Honeywell International, a technology and manufacturing company, to supply the campus sports facility with solar power. Under the agreement, Honeywell will install solar panels on the roof of the Pamplin Sports Center and sell to the college the [...]
Professor Bierzychudek studies natural selection’s effect on desert flowers
6 November 2007
- Advancing Knowledge
(Portland, Ore.)—Twenty years after beginning a field study in the Mojave Desert, evolutionary biologist Paulette Bierzychudek has published a report that reconsiders the shifting balance theory, which has influenced scientists and researchers for decades. Bierzchudek, William Swindells Sr. Professor of Natural Sciences, and Douglas Schemske of Michigan State University found that the dissemination of blue [...]
Bentley sees big potential in microscopic particles
29 October 2007
- Advancing Knowledge
(Portland, Ore.)—Anne Bentley, assistant professor of chemistry, received a $30,000 Faculty Start-up Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation to fund her nanoparticle research. The microscopic fluorescent particles Bentley will study are similar to the materials used in television screens and have potential applications throughout the electronics industry Though tens of thousands of nanoparticles could [...]
Jens Mache receives grant to advance computer science education
18 October 2007
- Advancing Knowledge
(Portland, Ore.)—Jens Mache, associate professor of computer science, recently received an $85,355 grant from the National Science Foundation in order to explore how to bring the new field of wireless sensor networks into the undergraduate classroom. Until now, sensor network education has been primarily offered at the graduate or professional levels. Mache and his colleague [...]
Undergraduate discovers Swiffer-like adaptation in two unrelated spiders
10 October 2007
- Advancing Knowledge
(Portland, Ore.)—While working on an independent study project in a biology lab at Lewis & Clark College, Rebecca Duncan made a discovery that may someday find its way into kitchens and onto battlefields. Studying two groups of spiders that stick sand to themselves as a means of camouflage, Duncan discovered that they had developed the [...]