September 2007

Invited Speaker Gigs: Fred Kamke gave the keynote address at a conference on "Coating Wood and Wood Composites: Designing for Durability", Seattle. His presentation was "Bulletproof Wood Composites - Fact or Fiction?". The conference was sponsored by the Federation of Societies for Coatings Technology. Mike Milota was an invited speaker at the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement's Western Regional Meeting in Portland. His talk on "Hazardous Air Pollutant Emissions during Lumber Drying for Western Species" was a prelude to a panel discussion on acetaldehyde emissions from lumber kilns. Data collected over the past year by Mike and Paul Mosher shows higher than expected levels of acetaldehyde emissions. Fred Kamke also gave invited talks to an ASM International (American Society for Materials) local chapter meeting in Portland on “Modified Wood for Structural Composites.”

Mexico Extension Methods Workshop: Rick Fletcher, Nicole Strong, and Eric Hansen delivered an Extension Methods workshop to over 40 professionals in August in Guadalajara Mexico. The workshop was part of the Higher Education for Development, Training, Internships, Exchanges, and Scholarships Initiative and an OSU project on enhancing the economic and environmental sustainability of Mexico’s forest sector.  

New Wood Quality Project: John Nairn and Barb Lachenbruch received funding from Wood Quality Initiative, Ltd. (New Zealand) to work on internal checking (IC), a feature that is quite common in radiata pine trees but is also found occasionally in Douglas-fir, hemlock, and other woods. Checks, a mm wide and meters long, form within the earlywood of the growth rings, decreasing value especially for veneer and appearance grade woods. They will explore the energy necessary for IC formation in the laboratory and infer the most likely mechanisms for IC formation in green trees and during processing.

Other New Projects: Boris Clouet, a French MS student began working with Lech Muszyński on durability of green bonded finger joints (joint project with Unité de Sciences du Bois et des Bio polymères INRA Université Bordeaux 1). Rajat Panwar participated in the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) program and reviewed 30 companies from all over the world on their corporate social responsibility/sustainability progress.

Kudos: USDA CSREES is promoting Kaichang Li’s award winning, NRI- grant-funded adhesive development at:
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/newsroom/research/2007/glue.html.

Other Notable Events: John Nairn chaired a session on Wood Composites at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Composites. It is the first time that society has had a session on wood composites. He also presented "Fracture Toughness of MDF and Other Materials with Fiber Bridging." Fred Kamke presented a paper at the European COST Action E34 meeting on Bonding Modified Wood in Bled Slovenia on September 6. The title was “Laminating structural composites from densified wood." Fred was also an instructor at a recent Wood-based Composite Center short course in Virginia. Chris Knowles toured small log processing facilities in five Oregon counties with USFS researchers to help the Forest Service and OWIC better understand opportunities and challenges with small log processing operations.

Temple-Inland Visit: OWIC and WSE hosted a Temple-Inland corporate research team on September 20-21. Matt Lowe, Corporate Business Innovation Manager and Tom Lehtinen, Director, Industrial Panels and Applied Research Center were here to learn about current WSE research and to identify areas for potential collaboration. Chris Knowles organized tours and research presentations given by 10 WSE faculty members.

University Service: WSE faculty will be unusually active with University Service this year with Rakesh Gupta serving as the Chair of the Research Council and a member of the Athletic Advisory Committee. John Nairn has been appointed to the University Undergraduate Research Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity (URISC) and Tom McLain is the Chair of the Graduate Council and member of the University Information Technology Committee. Camille Freitag is serving as a Faculty Senator.

DEPARTMENT OF WOOD SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

What is this? A monthly capsule summary of selected project updates, new ventures, new grants/ contracts/ testing programs, major papers, accomplishments, awards and kudos, other stuff you are proud of, or activities that your colleagues (and DH) might find interesting. The goal is better awareness of the professional activities of faculty, staff and students in Wood Science & Engineering.