Event of the day
TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2010 • PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY • VOLUME 64, ISSUE 101
Don’t miss the opportunity to hear some free, live and local music as part of the PSU Live! Spring Concert Series. When: Noon Where: PSU Park Blocks
WWW.DAILYVANGUARD.COM • FREE
INSIDE OPINION Jump starting college is good for some To earn dual credits or not to earn dual credits? PAGE 2
Social Purchasing Careless consumer culture reaches new heights PAGE 3
Historic building might become history No bids to move house on SW 11th leave PSU with few choices Catrice Stanley Vanguard staff
Brandon Spencer-Hartle first noticed the old building at 1633 Southwest 11th while a student at Portland State. Though he graduated in 2009, Hartle still thinks about the building as a grad student at the University of Oregon, where he is in the Historic Preservation Program.
Portland State has been thinking about the building, too—it wants to get rid of it. The building was first built in the 1880s, meaning it was built more than 60 years before PSU was founded in 1946. However, it has stood empty for years due to asbestos and other issues that make it unsafe for use, according to Scott Gallagher, director of communications for PSU. There was an offer to give the house to any prospective buyer for only $1, as long as they were able to move the structure by June 30, according to an article in the Daily Journal of Commerce.
However, bids for the house haven’t come in because of the expense required to move the building. Moving it could cost anywhere between an estimated $30,000–50,000, according to Keith Settle, President of Northwest Structural Moving Company. The estimation does not include moving power lines or streetcar lines. As of now, there is no clear proposal for any development to replace the building. According to Spencer-Hartle, the assumption is that there will be a new housing building or a mixed-use building.
“One of the issues is that you would likely have to cross the streetcar line. And if you cross the streetcar line, you have to cut the streetcar wire, and that’s a big financial hurdle just to move it across the street,” Spencer-Hartle said. Proposals for moving the house are over and questions of tearing the building down have begun. “Even if we don’t find an owner, we will recycle the building after we abate it,” Gallagher said in the “We’d work with the Rebuilding Center so
HISTORY continued on page four
NEWS Silent activism University of Chicago prof gave speech on silence as a form of political activism PAGE 4
ARTS
Sexy space music PSU student Nichole Cooper steals the show in Wild Space A Go Go PAGE 6 Tasty ’n’ perfect John Gorham opens a new brunch restaurant that hits the spot PAGE 7 Liana Shewey/Portland State Vanguard
Cost prohibitive: The house couldn’t even be sold for $1 because the cost of moving it to a new location would be too high.
SPORTS
Nathalie Nève studied biomechanics and particle interactions Courtney Graham Vanguard staff
Viks to compete at Regionals Women’s golf team set to take a swing at NCAA West Regionals PAGE 9 Meet Dennis Ferguson A chat with the athletics department’s director of new business development PAGE 10
Nathalie Nève recently became the first student to receive a Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, which is housed in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. When Nève began her studies in 2006, the program had not yet been confirmed. However, on March 10, 2010, Nève successfully defended her dissertation, which was the third and final step in the process of receiving her Ph.D. from the program. Nève’s dissertation focused specifically on “The MicroPIVOT:
First Ph.D. awarded by Dept. Of Mechanical and Materials Engineering An Integrated particle image velocimeter and optical tweezers instrument for microscale studies.” Through her research, she developed a technique that allows a particle or cell to be optically suspended in a flow such that the particle’s velocity may be measured, manipulated using tweezers, and its surface can be imaged at a very high resolution. “My research was more in biomechanical engineering,” Nève said. “I started a lab [at PSU] where I had to build a novel
instrumentation in the lab for myself and for students in the future to use.” According to Nève, the device is a combination of two laser technologies: microPIV and optical tweezers. Using these two lazers, Nève was able to develop an instrument that could essentially trap an object in space using light, resulting in minimal interference. The applications for this device are numerous when considering how it can be used to test fluid stress on particles and synthetic materials
Photo courtesy of Portland State University
Nathalie Nève
that will be used in the human body—a very fluid environment. For example, this knowledge could be used to develop synthetic bones or other biomaterials, Nève said.
NÈVE continued on page five