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Sound Off: Food & Science GMOs in Oregon

IN May of 2013, food inspectors found GMO wheat from Oregon in a shipment to Japan and Korea, countries that strictly forbid genetically modified organisms. This fueled a broader debate and legislation surrounding GMO labeling and modified crop-growing in Oregon. We caught up with Scott Dahlman (Oregonians for Food & Shelter) and Scott Bates (GMO Free Oregon) to frame the debate for us.

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Shoemakers Row

REGON HAS A LONG AND ILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY IN THE SHOEMAKING INDUSTRY. Home of the footwear giant Nike, the state is also the site of the world’s oldest known shoes, 10,000-year-old sagebrush bark sandals discovered in a cave near Fort Rock, east of Gilchrist. 

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Sound Off: Opening New Logging Areas

Sound Off: Opening New Logging Areas 
In September, Rep. Peter DeFazio, the ranking member of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, saw the passage of the Oregon & California Trust Act. This bill effectively opens federally managed O&C Trust lands in the Cascades andCoastalRangefor logging of up to 500 million board-feet per year, compared with 200 million board-feet annually harvested over the past few years through BLM-managedOregonforests. The bill also establishes 90,000 acres of new wilderness, 130 miles of new Wild and Scenic river designations, and provides protection for more than 1.2 million acres of mature and old growth forests. The logging proceeds would generate an estimated $90 million forOregoncounties that are facing the long-anticipated cut of federal logging subsidies known as the Secure Rural Schools legislation. Proponents of the bill cite its continued federal funding and job creation. Opponents of the bill see it as a repeal of the Northwest Forest Plan, which aims for lower forest production and conservation. Here, Rep. DeFazio and Wild Oregon’s director, Sean Stevens debate the merits of the bill. 

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Exploring the Depths, Earthquakes and ‘The Big One’ Dean Livelybrooks

We caught up with Livelybrooks in Astoria, aboard the Navy-Woods Hole research vessel, Atlantis. He had just returned from helping recover thirty seismometers—each about half the size of a compact car—from the underwater fault line between the Juan de Fuca and North American plates.

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Drones

To emphasize that point, in 2012, Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin was allowed to set up on a hill a half mile from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. He and his team of students on that hill, hijacked an $80,000 drone that the Department of Homeland Security was testing for law enforcement purposes. The academics easily stole command and sent the drone hurtling toward the ground. This drone, it should be noted, had the same security that is standard for commercial UAVs. 

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Drones + Privacy Issues

The United States Supreme Court held that observing a person’s back yard by naked eye from an aerial vehicle traveling at normal altitudes was not a search — because such observation fell under the ‘plain view’ doctrine (the back yard was ‘in plain view’).

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Risa Proehl on tracking population and trends

Though Risa Proehl keeps a low profile, her work can create an enormous financial impact. As a demographic analyst who manages the Oregon Population Estimate Program, a lot of state and federal funding hinges on Proehl’s findings.