Portland State Magazine Winter 2013

WINTER 2013 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 5 Cyclists make good customers BUSINESSES NOW HAVE an incentive to encourage bicycling. A Portland State study found that cyclists who arrive at bars, restaurants, and convenience stores by bicycle spend more money per month than people who come by car, mass transit, or on foot. The study, led by civil engineering professor Kelly Clifton, discovered that businesses that provide bike parking and are located closer to low-traffic, bike-friendly streets have measurably more bike customers than those that don’t. This suggests that building bike and pedestrian infrastructure could be good for business. Studying the origins of life IT’S A FANTASTIC NOTION that cooperating molecules may have set the stage for life on Earth. Now, chemistry professor Niles Lehman has got them to work together in a test tube, and the science community is impressed. The research was recently published in Nature . When Lehman and his team put six RNA molecule fragments together in a test tube, the fragments quickly assembled themselves into full molecules. By the end of the experiment, the researchers had millions of molecules. The work gives a glimpse into the possible origins of life—in which a primordial soup of RNA molecules cooperated to build ever more complex structures. PA R K B L O C K S