Your dog is the best. You know it. Here are a few of our favorite photos from our Ruffwear Dog Days contest. 

A look at an Oregon doctor locked in the battle against pancreatic cancer, the deadliest cancer in America, killing 95 percent of its victims. Dr. Brett Sheppard, professor and clinical vice-chairman of surgery at Oregon Health & Science University, gave 1859 access to ground zero in his war on cancer—the operating room, his research labs and wherever he finds an audience.

Suction mining is essentially the mining of gold from river bottoms using a floating craft and a motorized vacuum to suck sediment from the river floor. Proponents of the practice point to longstanding federal mining laws in their defense and beneficial studies from various sources. Opponents of suction mining say that vacuuming river bottoms upsets aquatic habitat and stirs up toxic mercury particles that eventually become part of the human food source. 

SEMpdx president Mike Rosenberg talks social media with 1859.

If you want to experience a rush without any drugs, turn your browser to oshatz.com. Enter the wondrous world of Portland architect Robert Harvey Oshatz. You might think you’ve fallen into the rabbit hole. Each is a commissioned piece of art—a place that people live, work or go to worship. Oshatz designs around “the poetry of a site” and the personality of the client. Some structures are flowing and sensuous, others sharp and edgy. “When the building is at peace with the environment, the people inside are at peace,” he says. The client is the reason for the project, he emphasizes. “I try to give the client everything he wants rather than imposing how I want to live in the space. All dreams should be fulfilled.” His own Portland home is shaped like a ship’s bow, built in the 1980s on a steep hillside overlooking the Willamette River. The interior…