All in feature writing

Feature: Building antiracist curriculum in Oregon's schools

The Oregon Writing Project brings educators together to build antiracist curriculum and transform their own teaching expertise into scholarly research.

Scholar-educator Linda Christensen believes that the battle for social justice and racial equity begins in the classroom. Christensen is director of the Oregon Writing Project (OWP) at Lewis & Clark, a program that provides teachers in the region with the opportunity to collaborate on developing antiracist curriculum and that elevates K–12 student writing.

Photo: Robert Reynolds

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Feature: Protecting the rights of farmed animals

Every year, more than half a million pigs arrive at slaughterhouses around the country sick or severely injured. Unable to walk, these “downed” animals sometimes carry human transmissible diseases such as listeria, campylobacter, swine flu, and salmonella. Students in Lewis and Clark law school’s new Animal Law Litigation Clinic (ALLC) are facing off against industry and government to prevent animal suffering and protect the food supply, with the help of staff attorney Delcianna Winders.

Illustration by Sue Coe, Factory Pharm, 2001

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Feature: The fight against COVID-19

Dr. Mawuli Nyaku is a seasoned public health expert and epidemiologist who has led multiple efforts to boost vaccine coverage in the U.S. and worldwide for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is now global director of medical affairs for pediatric vaccines at the pharmaceutical giant Merck, which has two COVID-19 vaccines and one antiviral therapy in the pipeline.

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Feature: A new normal for wildfire seasons

As more than 45,000 fires scorched 8 million acres of land across the American West this past summer and fall, national news stories were accompanied by stark images: orange-red skies over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, smoke obscuring Seattle’s iconic Space Needle, and evacuated towns across Oregon. In late July, Emily Shafer ’18 and nine other East Coast firefighters drove across the country as part of the Connecticut Interstate Fire Crew to help tackle some of the blazes in northeastern California.

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Feature: NASA's New Horizons space probe

Four billion miles from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft investigates Pluto and the furthest reaches of the solar system. 

A massive region of planetesimal bodies called the Kuiper Belt circumscribes our solar system. Home to dwarf planets like Pluto, the belt also boasts thousands of small, planet-like objects which may date back to the beginnings of our own planetary system. On January 1, 2019, NASA’s New Horizons space probe completed a flyby of one of these objects, the most distant object in our solar system ever to be studied.

Photo: NASA

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Feature: National Geographic explores the Okavango

In a new National Geographic film, editor and writer Brian Newell crafts a tale of the human and environmental threats faced by Africa’s mighty Okavango Delta. 

Into the Okavango, a National Geographic documentary film released in December, follows a trio of modern-day explorers as they travel by traditional canoe (mokoro) more than 1,500 miles down the massive Okavango river toward its mighty delta, a site under increasing threat from human activity.

Photo: National Geographic Films

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Feature: Are cryptocurrency & blockchain the future?

Willamette University alumni and faculty experts discuss the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and how digital economies may be quietly revolutionizing the business world.

Since 2009, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and thousands more digital currencies have used blockchain technology to build volatile but exciting trading markets, untethered from the analog world of banks and national economies. While many are skeptical that digital currencies will democratize money, there is little doubt that blockchain has massive business potential.

Photo by David McBee from Pexels.

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Feature: Seeking a cure for HIV

The Procko lab applies big data tools to molecular biochemistry. Their goal: a better understanding of how we might fight HIV-1. 

According to Erik Procko, HIV is “a tricky little beast.” Research into this potentially deadly virus, which has infected nearly 38 million people worldwide, accounts for half of the Procko lab’s work at the University of Illinois’ School of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Photo: MCB Magazine

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Feature: LIGO detects gravitational waves

This February, newspaper headlines around the world proclaimed it one of the biggest discoveries in physics for decades: the first observation of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime. 

The discovery was made by the LIGO Project, based jointly at the Hanford Site near Richland, Washington, and in Livingston, Louisiana. Since 2006, Assistant Professor of Physics Greg Ogin has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

Photo: Matt Z. Banderas

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Feature: The psychology of disgust

Does Professor Thomas Armstrong’s research into the psychology of disgust hold the key to more effective treatments for anxiety disorders?

Two contrasting images appear on a computer screen in Assistant Professor of Psychology Thomas Armstrong’s lab. After several seconds, they disappear, to be replaced by a new pair. Participants in this experiment see one “disgusting” object—a rotting apple, a blood-spattered sink—and one “neutral” counterpart—a wall clock or a coat hook. A small device attached to the computer tracks their eye movements, allowing Armstrong to determine what people do when they see something disgusting—look at it, or avert their gaze.

Photo: Matt Z. Banderas

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Feature: Interview with author Sherman Alexie

His grandmother’s babysitter was Chief Joseph. He has appeared on The Colbert Report. He laughs with you but he also talks about genocide. When you speak to Sherman Alexie, you cover a lot of ground. Just don’t ask him to be a spokesman for anyone.

An interview with Seattle-based author Sherman Alexie about his novel Reservation Blues, which charts the course of Coyote Springs, an all-Indian rock ’n’ roll band that forms on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington. In Alexie’s novel, music is a means to tell stories filled with humor and sadness.

Photo courtesy Royce Carlton Inc.

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Feature: On the death of David Bowie

I listened to Blackstar twice on January 9, the day after it came out and a day before David Bowie died. I listened to it a third time on January 11. Between several songs on the album, there are little rustles of paper and breaths, high and close to the mic. During that third listen, those little noises became personal in a way that they weren’t before. Those tiny movements of air now seem like Bowie letting us know that he was still back there, that he was still pulling the strings.

Photo: AP

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Feature: Climate change in Antarctica

At Wittenberg University in Ohio, climate change professor Sarah Fortner's work on Antarctic glaciers and earth resources may be one step toward a more environmentally sustainable future.

Getting to Antarctica isn’t easy. It takes nearly a day and a half to travel from the U.S. to Christchurch, New Zealand. Then your gear is checked to make sure it meets military standards and weight requirements. Next, you get your issues: “A big red parka and what they call bunny boots—basically they inflate a little bit so there’s a layer of air to insulate your feet,” Fortner explained. Finally, around 100 passengers bundle into a Lockheed C-130 for the flight from Christchurch to Antarctica, which takes eight hours—that is, unless you get “boomeranged,” or sent back after flying halfway there due to adverse conditions.

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Feature: Seattle's LEAD Program

It's a Thursday night in downtown Seattle. Reflected in the rain-slicked streets are the red and blue lights of a police cruiser.

Inside, an officer is running a records check on an individual carrying a few grams of drugs. The records come back clean: no convictions for violent offenses. The cop gets out of the car and offers the individual two options. One is King County jail. The other is referral to a case manager with LEAD, a pre-arrest program that enables police officers in downtown Seattle and adjacent neighborhoods to redirect low-level drug crime or street prostitution offenders without prior violent convictions into community-based programs.

Photo: Matt Z. Banderas

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