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MSU Research roundup -Croation cooperation -Great ball of plasma -Montserrat orioles -World’s most cited scientists

Croation cooperation

People who live in former communist countries know all about cooperatives. But MSU is
working with Croatia to set up western-style cooperatives where producers, and not the
government, are in charge. Marty Frick, associate professor of agricultural education, and
professor emeritus Doug Bishop are assisting the University of Zagreb in setting up a business
course on cooperatives. They are also helping the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry start an
outreach program for farmers. Frick said Croatia still imports much of its food, but he sees
potential for selling cabbage, potatoes and other crops. Frick and Bishop will travel to Croatia
in August. Two Croatians will then come here in September. More exchanges are planned for
2003.

Great ball of plasma

It’s hard for light to travel through plasma. It bounces around and gets stuck, says Neil Cornish,
assistant professor of physics at MSU. Take the sun, for example. The sun is a giant ball of
plasma, and it takes about one million years for light to travel from its center to its surface. But
it only takes eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth. Cornish believes the universe
used to operate in much the same way, with light getting caught on charged particles. To find
out more, Cornish is involved in a project to map the early universe. The National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) launched the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) in June.

Montserrat orioles

The tiny island of Montserrat in the West Indies has a number of species found nowhere else in
the world. One is the orange and black Montserrat oriole, now an endangered bird.
Conservationists think the island’s ash volcano may be wiping out insects the birds eat, so
Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds asked MSU entomology associate professor
Mike Ivie to come investigate. He visited the island for the second time in January. Ivie was
picked because of his beetle research in the Virgin Islands and neighboring Dominica and
Antigua. Graduate student Katie Marske will observe oriole nests this summer to see if
nest-raiding rats are another reason for the drop from 4,000 birds in 1997 to a few hundred
pairs on the island today.

World’s most cited

How does a scientist know whether his or her work is useful to other scholars? One way is by
seeing how often other people "cite" your work. When one scientist cites another, it’s an
acknowledgment of the importance of that work to his or her own studies. The Institute for
Scientific Information (ISI) keeps track of those acknowledgments and publishes a "highly cited
list." At least one Montanan is on the list — Bill Costerton, director of the MSU Center for
Biofilm Engineering. Costerton published his first paper in 1978 when hardly anyone had
heard of biofilms. Now the clumps of bacteria are thought to be responsible for a number of
nasty infections.

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