Business

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Alan Scholz: Portable bike builder

A self-described serial entrepreneur, Alan Scholz has built his life and businesses around his love affair with bicycles. CEO of Green Gear Cycling and maker of Bike Friday in Eugene, Scholz has converted his passion into dozens of innovations for cyclists worldwide. “I’m out on a ride, going 40 mph downhill, and I’m thinking of how to design a bike so others can experience the thrill,” he says. Scholz, 61, opened his first bike shop at age 17 in the garage of his parent’s North Dakota home. At 19, he borrowed his mother’s sewing machine and stitched together a carrying bag that would fit on his bike. He peddled the resulting product, the Burley Bike Bag, at the Eugene Saturday Market as a young father, but had difficulty getting his infant daughter there safely on his bicycle. So he invented a safe and durable child trailer—the Burley Lite. The success…

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Xihou Yin: Scientist

A new biotech company in Corvallis, AGAE Technologies, makes ecofriendly products that may change the world by helping clean up contaminated sites and toxic waste dumps, simultaneously boosting yields from older oil wells. Senior research scientist Xihou Yin, Ph.D., of Oregon State University’s College of Pharmacy, identified a strain of bacteria that produces molecules called rhamnolipid biosurfactants. These molecules have widespread applications, including removal of heavy metals from contaminated soils and recovering hardto- extract oil from mature wells. Rhamnolipids also offer biodegradable green solutions for cosmetics, shampoo and soaps, as well as organic food production and pharmaceuticals. Yin, who came to OSU in 1997, and his team at AGAE (American Green Agricultural and Environmental) Technologies, were the first to work out an efficient and cost-effective process to produce highly purified rhamnolipids in large quantities. This had eluded researchers worldwide since 1949, when rhamnolipids were originally discovered. Researchers have long sought…

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Heather Straw: Jewelry designer

Jewelry designer, mom and business woman extraordinaire, designer Heather Straw was selling about $1,000 a month in handmade jewelry when she attended a trade show in Las Vegas in 2005. In two days, she sold $43,000 and knew that her life was about to change. “I was a young mom, I’d just lost my shop in downtown Bend, and I was terrified about the future,” she says. “I gave my boyfriend, now my husband, the stack of orders, and we started filling them in our home.” Nashelle Jewelry soon had five employees working in her living room. In 2006, she leased an industrial-sized bay on Bend’s east side to house a showroom and work area. The business grew at warp speed, today encompassing six industrial bays and twenty to thirty employees, depending on the season. More than 400 boutiques worldwide carry the Nashelle and Nash (for men) lines. Nashelle rings,…

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Dogs for the Deaf

Oregon nonprofit Dogs for the Deaf rescues dogs and betters the lives of the hearing impaired.

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Beyond the Oregon Trail

Sue Alperin has put together a new, alternative history curriculum that sheds light on Oregon’s checkered racial past.

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Empty Bowls

Potters come together to create and fill bowls for those in need.

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Clear-cutting

Clear-cutting is a form of logging in which the targeted acres are razed, leaving no standing vegetation. Environmentalists oppose this method as having long-term disruptive effects to forest populations.