PSU Magazine Summer 1989

Sidney Lakefi sh, 1959, associate pro– fessor of business administration; Donald J. Leu , 1980, professor of education; Richard Lindner, 1962, associate professor of English; Harold A. Linstone, 1970, university professor of systems science; Elmer Magnusen, 1973, humanities librarian and associate professor; Laureen Nussbaum, 1973, professor of German; Rudi H. Nussbaum , 1959, professor of physics. Jack C. Riley, 1962 , associate professor of electrical engineering; Charles W. Sinclair, 1964, assistant professor of mathematical sciences; William P. Stalnaker, 1968, professor of music; Garland A. Trzynka, 1966, associate pro– fessor of physical education; Charles M. White, 1955, professo r of history and director of Summer Session; Asher B. Wilson, 1959, professor of theater arts; . and Baxter D. Wilson, 1965, professor of English. Back in business The School of Business Administration has again received accreditation for its undergraduate and graduate academic pro– grams from the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). In addition, the school 's Department of Accounting received AACSB accounting program accreditation. The AACSB is the national accrediting body for business schools. Of some 1,200 American business school s, only 265 cur– rently have AACSB accreditation of any kind , according to Vergil Miller, dean of PSU 's School of Business Administration. Portland State's accreditation will remain in effect for nine years. Last year, PSU 's School of Business Administration programs were placed on "continuing review" by the AACSB because of concerns raised about student access to microcomputers, the need to fill the accounting department head position permanently, together with the AACSB's des ire for more complete documentation of course coverage by permanent PSU faculty members as well as their scholarly productivity. The chemistry of smog (Continued from page 7) Ideally, their research will help predict worldwide air quality levels into the next century. HO's importance in the atmosphere is as a catalyst. HO molecules, in their ex– tremely short life (as little as l,OOOth of a second), keep the atmosphere clean by combining with pollutants, oxidizing them, and allowing them to be removed through rain . In high levels, it creates Acid Rain . Still , it serves as an efficient air filter. Some substances such as fluorocarbons, found in Freon, spray cans and as a by– product of the manufacturing of styrofoam, don't combine with HO, and as a result linger for years until they drift into the stratosphere, break down and deplete the Earth's ozone shield . While on average HO keeps the at– mosphere clean, it reacts faster in areas with lots of sunshine - like Los Angeles - and creates noxious substances such as nitric acid and sulfuric acid. In their experiments the scientists at PSU draw a continuous air sample into a vacuum chamber and shine a laser beam through it in search of HO molecules: the molecules absorb the light, reflect (fluoresce) it back in a form that is seen by a light detector. Out of every l,000,000,000,000,000 photons in a laser pulse, typically only a single photon shows evidence of HO. O'Brien developed the program with the help of Tom Hard, a research fellow ; Cornelius Chan, a Ph .D. in the PSU En– vironmental Sciences and Resources pro– gram; and Ahmad Mehrabzadeh, a PSU master's graduate in chemistry. All three now devote full time to this research. He said other groups have tried and failed for years to refine this method. The PSU group discovered that the secret was in regulating the pressure of the air flow– ing into the sampling equipment. At too high a pressure, the HO fluorescence is lost in a myriad of other light pulses. "The reaction is so straightfo rward that we can predict how long pollutants will stay in the atmosphere once we know the HO concentration," he said . As more and more attention is paid to the threats of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, the use of alternative fuels, and the growing industrialization of the Third World , finding out that informa– tion could go a long way toward saving the precious air we breathe. D Toxins and membranes (Continued f rom page 7) balance is upset, the cell can die, or at least malfunction. Cancer, the rapid growth of malignant cells, is a graphic example. Encasing the cellular factory is a semipermeable membrane. When Smejtek began his research in 1974, he introduced various pesticides to artificial membranes, and found that some types, including PCP, made those membranes electrically con– ductive. Other types, including the her– bicides contained in Agent Orange, changed the balance of positive and negative ions passing through the cell membrane. The findings were important in understanding toxic ity because cells must maintain a specific, well defined distribu– tion of ions to live and work properly. The findings on PCP were particularly impor– tant because of the chemical's relevance to the Pacific Northwest: more than 100 mills in Oregon alone have been using it for decades as a wood preservative. When The Oregonian published an arti– cle on PCP several years ago, Smejtek received phone calls from ex- mill workers reporting sicknesses that no doctor could define. " People didn't know much about the toxicity of the chemicals they had to work with , so they sometimes ignored certain protections, and got exposed ," Smejtek said. In the course of his study, he found that not only did PCP affect cell mem– branes, but the membranes affected the PCP, changing its physical and chemical properties in ways that showed it to be more toxic than had previously been known. D PSU 23